Jenna Bush Hager reveals the piece of advice her mother gave her before she went to college

Jenna Bush Hager has opened up about the one piece of advice her mother gave her before she went to college and why she is proud of the mistakes she made as a student. 

The Today host, 41, reflected on her college years on Wednesday’s show, nearly two decades after she graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor’s degree in English in 2004. 

Bush Hager was just a few months into her freshman at UT when her father, George W. Bush, was elected president in 2000. Her twin sister, Barbara Bush, was a student at Yale University at the time. 

‘One piece of advice that my mom [Laura Bush] tried to teach me early on was to treat college like a job,’ she explained. ‘So to go to campus early, stay at campus, stay dedicated.’

‘One piece of advice that my mom tried to teach me early on was to treat college like a job,’ she explained. Bush Hager is pictured with her mom at her father’s inauguration in 2005 

‘I’m not sure I totally listened to that advice,’ she added with a laugh. 

As the daughter of the president and first lady, she didn’t have the same leeway other students did. Any mistake she made, made headlines. 

Bush Hager’s father was in his first year in office when she was cited for possession of alcohol as a minor and using a fake ID to purchase alcohol within a five-week period in 2001. 

However, she doesn’t have any regrets.  

‘The thing I’m most proud of, which people might look at as a regret, was that I made mistakes,’ she told her co-hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb. 

‘And I was allowed to make mistakes, and I failed. And mine was public. But kids don’t feel like they can fail because everything is on social media.’ 

Bush Hager was first picked up by police in April of 2001 for drinking a beer in a club and pleaded no contest to a charge of possessing alcohol underage that same month.

She was ordered to pay $51.25 in court costs while serving eight hours of community service, and she also had to attend an alcohol awareness class.

Bush Hager was just a few months into her freshman at UT when her father, George W. Bush, was elected president in 2000. She is pictured with her father and sister in 2005

Bush Hager’s father was in his first year in office when she and her twin sister, Barbara Bush, were busted for underage drinking in 2001 

‘The thing I’m most proud of, which people might look at as a regret, was that I made mistakes. And I was allowed to make mistakes, and I failed. And mine was public,’ Bush Hager said

The next month Barbara was visiting her in Austin when they were arrested for attempting to purchase alcohol at Chuy’s, a Mexican chain restaurant.

Bush Hager was rejected for using an ID that belonged to someone else who was of legal drinking age. Her twin had already been served by the time the police arrived and was charged with underage possession. 

The incident landed the two on the cover of weekly magazines. 

Bush Hager previously shared how her father apologized to her when she and Barbara got busted for underage drinking.

‘When I called my dad to say, “I’m really sorry… I got this ticket for drinking underage,” he said, “No, I’m sorry,’ she recalled on the morning show last year. 

‘We did embarrass [our parents], but they never would say that. He said, “I’m sorry, I told you [that] you can be normal, and you can’t. You can’t order margaritas.”‘ 

Bush Hager’s co-stars also shared their college mistakes and regrets during the segment. 

Bush Hager’s co-stars Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb also shared their college mistakes and regrets during the segment

‘I was someone who just crammed for tests and just spit out the answers, as opposed to realizing it was a beautiful place to learn,’ Kotb, 58, said of her studies at Virginia Tech

Guthrie, 51, advised doing a gap year if you can, admitting that she ‘didn’t care about learning’ when she was a student at the University of Arizona 

‘I was someone who just crammed for tests and just spit out the answers, as opposed to realizing it was a beautiful place to learn,’ Kotb, 58, said of her studies at Virginia Tech.  

‘I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t go in with the master plan,’ she added. ‘I feel like there’s so much planning. The kids are going crazy: “Oh, I need to study abroad. I need to do this, I need to do that. I need more of these courses. I need to work.” It’s like, “Slow it down.”‘

Meanwhile, Guthrie advised doing a gap year if you can. 

‘When I went to college, I didn’t care about learning,’ she admitted. ‘I never read the books.’

She explained that she ‘did the bare minimum to just get a passing grade’ at the University of Arizona. 

Guthrie noted that she ‘pulled it together’ years later when she attended law school at Georgetown University, where she graduated at the top of her class.  

Bush Hager pointed out that many people say ‘college is wasted on the young.’ 

‘The way I studied was so different my freshman year as opposed to my senior year,’ she said. ‘My senior year I took all the great teachers, really hard ones. My freshman [year], I was like, “What’s the class that can give you an A? What’s the easiest class?”‘