I had the privilege of meeting Carlo Rovelli (who attended university in my hometown, many years before me) in a public event targeting people that, like me, were at the time finishing high school and had to choose what to do with their lives. We showed up already bored, waiting for the usual adults who would explain us why to study this and not that, what are the many possible career paths achievable by that, which economic sectors were growing and how, and so on. In fact, some of the speakers did mostly that. On the contrary, Rovelli started to explain how he did not know what to do after school, and that he went to university initially because his family would have forced him to work as a plumber with his uncle if he decided not to go. He then advised us to choose to do only what we feel passionate about, and to distrust whoever, truth in hand, will explain us that by studying X we will be able to enter sector Y and achieve great success in life. It can seem trivial stuff, but when you are 18 and are being told those things by a humble but successful person, it really empowers you. He is also fairly easy to "approach", he himself came to speak to us after the event, joking about the fact we should not cut our hair "just to get a job" (I haven't since then, and I am 28 and working), hence I am not surprised he answers to people's comment on the interview, or that he is active on physics.stackexchange, for example.

I have studied computer science and got interested in physics and philosophy of science thanks to him, he kind of embodies my idea of science, and of civil responsibility, and I must say I have been a bit disappointed to see that also the academic world is full of "scientists" that underestimate the value of philosophy or other related subjects, or that teach students not to question "too much" what they are doing, preventing them to really see the "big picture" behind knowledge.