Loafing....................

In his youth Albert Einstein spent a year loafing aimlessly.  You don't get anywhere by not "wasting" time - something, unfortunately, that parents of teenagers tend frequently to forget.  He was in Pavia.  He had joined his family, having abandoned his studies in Germany, unable to endure the rigors of his high school there.  It was the beginning of the twentieth century, and in Italy the beginning of its industrial revolution.  His father, an engineer, was installing the first electricity-generating power plant in the Paduan plains.  Albert was reading Kant and attending occasional lectures at the University of Pavia:  for pleasure, without being registered there or having to think about exams.  It is thus that serious scientists are made.

-Carlo Rovelli, the opening paragraph of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics