【2006 Archives】

006 ArchivesBarack Obama that we know is a smooth politician and world leader—but in case you had any doubt, we now have proof that the former president was just as poetic in college as he is today.

Letters Obama wrote to his college girlfriend, Alexandra McNear, have been made public to researchers at Emory University's Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library in Atlanta on Thursday.

There are nine letters from Obama in total, ranging in dates from 1982 to early 1984 and spanning his time at Columbia University in New York City and Indonesia. The university has had these letters since 2014, but are now allowing researchers to paint a clearer picture of the man before the White House.

In the letters, Obama poetically discusses everything from community organizing to wrestling with his identity and his feelings—though they aren't necessarily love letters. According to a Emory professor, they cover the end of the pair's relationship.

“My ideas aren’t as crystallized as they were while in school, but they have an immediacy and weight that may be more useful if and when I’m less observer and more participant,” Obama wrote in one letter, dated in 1984, according to AP.

His thoughts on school are relatable. "School. What intelligent observations can I glean from the first two weeks? I pass through the labyrinths, corridors, see familiar faces, select and discard classes and activities, fluctuate between unquenchable curiosity and heavy, inert boredom," he wrote.

In another letter, Obama included a ripped out copy of a book review from the New York Timeson Rachel M. Brownstein’s “Becoming a Heroine.”

You can read more excerpts from the letters here, but you're going to have to make an appointment to see them yourself.