The road to professional success looks different for everyone. Some people are born into wealth and power — others start from the bottom and work their way up.
In honor of Presidents Day, we took a look at the career paths of 15 US presidents to learn where they started.
Here are the surprising first jobs held by Nixon, Clinton, Obama, and 12 other US presidents:
SEE ALSO: How to memorize every US president's name in less than an hour
DON'T MISS: The 27 jobs that are most damaging to your health
George Washington started working as a surveyor in Shenandoah Valley at age 16.
When Washington, the first US president, was 16, Lord Thomas Fairfax gave him his first job surveying Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and West Virginia, according to kenmore.org.
Surveyors measure land, airspace, and water, and explain what it looks like and how much there is for legal records.
The next year, at age 17, Washington was appointed the official surveyor of Culpeper County. By the time he was 21, he owned more than 1,500 acres of land, according to virginia.edu.
John Adams was a schoolmaster.
After graduating from a class of 24 students, Adams took his first job as as a schoolmaster in Worcester, Massachusetts, according to a biography of the second US president on the University of Groningen website.
However, the career was not fulfilling for Adams and he was often filled with self doubt, as evidenced by the personal entries in his famous journal. To keep up with his own reading and writing, Adams would sometimes ask the smartest student to lead class.
Thomas Jefferson was a lawyer.
Before he became the third president of the US, Jefferson handled 900 matters while specializing in land cases as a lawyer in the General Court in Williamsburg, Virginia, according to encyclopediavirginia.org.
His time spent serving his clients, ranging from lower to upper class, greatly influenced his political ideology. As he wrote in his "Autobiography" in 1821, he wanted to create a "system by which every fibre would be eradicated of antient or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider