14 people shared the unglamorous summer jobs that forever changed their lives

The summer is the ideal time to find an internship that will teach you skills and lessons that you can use in your career.

But great internships are not always so easy to come by. Luckily, summer jobs, even ones completely unrelated to one's passions or career goals, can also provide valuable lessons about hard work, responsibility, and much more.

Even US President Barack Obama had the unglamorous task of scooping ice cream at Baskin-Robbins before he became the leader of the free world.

To find out more about the value of a summer job, I asked readers and Business Insider staff to chime in with their most memorable stories.

Here are some of the most interesting stories that people shared about summer jobs that affected their lives:

Some answers have been edited for clarity.