Jenna Bush Hager reveals the advice her mother gave her before going to college

Jenna Bush Hager is candid about the one piece of advice her mother gave her before going to college and why she’s proud of the mistakes she made as a student.

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

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

‘A piece of advice my mother [Laura Bush] trying to teach me early on was to treat college like a job,” she explained. “So to get to campus early, stay on campus, stay committed.”

“I’m not sure I listened to that advice at all,” she added with a laugh.

As the daughter of the president and first lady, she didn’t have the same latitude as other students. Every mistake she made made headlines.

Bush Hager’s father was in his first year in office when she was caught in 2001 possessing alcohol as a minor and using a false ID to purchase alcohol within a five-week period.

However, she has no regrets.

“The thing that I’m most proud of, that people might 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 children don’t feel like they can fail because everything is on social media.’

Bush Hager was first arrested by police in April 2001 for drinking a beer at a club and pleaded not contesting the charge of possession of underage alcohol that same month.

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

The following month, Barbara was visiting Austin when they were arrested for trying to buy alcohol from Chuy’s, a Mexican restaurant chain.

Bush Hager was rejected because he used an ID that belonged to someone else who was of legal drinking age. Her twin brother had already been served when police arrived and was charged with underage possession.

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

Bush Hager previously told how her father apologized when she and Barbara were arrested for underage drinking.

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

‘We were ashamed [our parents], but they would never 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.

“I was someone who would just cram for tests and just spit out the answers, instead of realizing it was a wonderful place to learn,” Kotb, 58, said of her studies at Virginia Tech.

‘I had no plan. I didn’t go into the master plan,” she added. “I feel like there’s so much planned. The kids go crazy: “Oh, I have to study abroad. I have to do this, I have to do that. I need more of these courses. I have to work.” It’s like, “Slow it down.”‘

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

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

She explained that she “did the bare minimum to get a passing grade” at the University of Arizona.

Guthrie noted that she “got it together” years later when she attended law school at Georgetown University, graduating top of her class.

Bush Hager pointed out that many people say that “colleges are wasted on young people.”

“The way I studied was so different in my freshman year than in my senior year,” she said. ‘In my senior year I followed all the great teachers, very difficult ones. My freshman [year]I was like, “What’s the class that can give you an A? What’s the easiest class?”‘