First Lady Michelle Obama shares the advice she'd give to her high school self

First Lady Michelle Obama sat down with Charlize Theron and former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Tuesday to host a panel on the power of educating more than 62 million girls who are not in school around the world.

Cindi Leive, editor-in-chief of Glamour magazine, moderated the discussion in front of an audience of 1,000 NYC-area schoolgirls. Girls from classrooms in Kenya, Ghana and Pakistan -- who are taking part in the World's Largest Lesson on the new Global Goals -- submitted their questions to the panel via video.

When asked to give advice to her high school self, Obama shared some words of wisdom with the crowd. "Don't sweat the small stuff in this time ... being a teenager is hard," she said. "You're not sure what to wear, you hate the way your hair looks everyday ... you don't have any money so you count on your parents, and they always say 'no' ... this is what I hear from my kids."

Photos from Glamour's Power of the Educated Girl event:

"But this is just four or five little years of your life ... don't sweat the small stuff. What is important right now is who you're going to be and how you're developing that part of yourself. So, go to school. Focus on your homework. Don't worry about what your friends are saying that much -- because half these people you're not going to know when you're sixty. It doesn't matter what they say or think right now."

"Don't get so mad at school that you drop out," Obama continued. "Don't get so mad at your mother that you stopped listening to her. Don't hate school so much that you don't stay with it. Because the older you get the more fun school is. College is a dream. Everybody should want to go to college."

"Freedom comes later. Now you invest. Now you put up with. Now you be patient. Because if you don't do it now, then you'll be living this cramped up life for the rest of your life with no choices and no options, and trust me, you don't want to be a sixty-year-old woman with no options."

Michelle Obama promotes the Let Girls Learn initiative: