Having said that, there's also a lot to be said for the experience and opportunities summer and seasonal jobs literally bombarded me with growing up (and okay, even when I was trying not to grow up). I think I worked almost every possible summer job: fast food, animal shelter, movie theater, lifeguard, clown for the elderly, and almost every single one of those little ditties gave me the tools I needed to do the things I do today...with the exception of the clown job. That was just fun.
You can find unexpected opportunities to fill your summer and beyond just about everywhere you look. Summer gets people moving, which means more opportunities for you to get your face out there in the working world! A few friends of mine moved in some really unexpected directions when they took on some interesting summer jobs.
Rod was maybe a sophomore in college when he took on what he thought would just be a really cool (literally, it was basically a huge freezer) summer gig for his first job ever: cashier at a flower shop. His main duties included talking to sweet old ladies, soccer moms and his two doting managers. After a while he got to be a little creative and arranged some flowers for clients. One of which ended up being a higher-up for the Virginia Opera. They ordered a ton of bouquets for one of their productions...unfortunately, they didn't know much about plants, like most of them need light in order to survive. Rod suggested they instead go with some ferns and pretty sustainable flowers that could last for a few days without a ton of light, instead of the potted arrangements they had. He made up some pretty inventive arrangements with the help of his managers and the Opera loved them! The cool summer gig Rod had found was turning into a pretty awesome opportunity--as his clientele increased, he was able to network with more and more people for more and more opportunities. And as it turns out, the Opera was so impressed with him that they hired him on seasonally as the Opera's on-set floral designer! It wasn't a big freezer, but he got used to it pretty quickly.
Another friend, who forces us to call him Little D, got his sales experience at a really early age. He's a pretty small dude, so when he went Christmas tree shopping with his parents when he was 13 and tried to pick the 6' tree up by himself, the owner of the lot thought he was so tough (read, so cute) that she offered him a job selling trees with her on the lot after school. He was young, and so he made mistakes--like forgetting to tie the trees to the roofs of people's cars, which ended up in a lot of trees not making it very far down the road. Forest relocation is what he called it. But his mistakes gave him plenty of customer service experience, often making deals with his forlorn tree-less customers to purchase similar trees even after paying for one tree already. I'm not suggesting you go out and dupe some poor saps (ha-ha! Get it?) out of their money for the sake of a holiday, but it was then that Little D realized he could really use his skills later in life as a high-energy real-estate broker. Those Christmas trees set him on a path that really gave him the right stuff to get ahead in life.
The point is, when you're out there looking for a summer or seasonal job, don't limit yourself to the same ol' burger joint, movie theater or construction site. Start with your interests, dip your feet in the water and dive in head first into the search for a job that's really going to satisfy all of your needs and lead to something fantastic!