Is everybody this impatient these days? Niu-ma skips two or three weeks of posting, and people are already asking if I’m selling the account.
Which reminds me — I owe you all a status update.
My life has been flipped upside down lately. In short:
Okay, “new” is relative. Niu-ma used to make video games, and the new job is game-related too.
But a pure games job wouldn’t have tempted me. My life and my goals have drifted a long way from leveling up, chasing high scores and unlocking outfits.
What hooked me: the new project is about K-12 education.
In short — take the principles and design DNA of games, add AI, and build learning games meant to upend traditional education.
Not exactly a brand-new idea, I know. There are plenty of educational games out there, and anyone who’s actually played them knows most are terrible.
One reason: real game people don’t want to do education, and education people can’t make games.
But the team Niu-ma joined are game-industry veterans who also happen to be moms and dads burning to change how school works.
So it took me less than 48 hours to decide this was the thing I wanted to do next.
Like a lot of people, I have complicated feelings about AI.
But love it or hate it, it’s a tide that isn’t turning back, and it’s going to reshape our lives whether we like it or not.
If I can’t change that, I’d rather help steer it somewhere good — like education.
Great education shouldn’t belong to a lucky few kids. AI and technology can put it within everyone’s reach — every child gets it, and gets excited about learning. That’s the vision.
The vision is gorgeous. The reality… starts with a to-do list from hell.
First: the move. The new company is in Austin, Texas — more than 2,000 miles from Seattle.
Imagine living in one house for ten years while raising two kids.
You and your husband both love buying things and hate throwing things away, so every room, garage included, is packed to the rafters.
Now you have one month to find a new home two thousand miles away and ship the entire contents of this house there.
Plus two kids, two cats and two cars.
……
These days I can barely move around my own house. One look at all this stuff and I forget how to breathe.
Compared with cool, coastal Seattle, Texas is a study in contrast: inland, hot, flat, huge — and the culture and the politics are a different planet. Adjusting will take a while.
Harder still: ten-plus years of friends and community are here. Thinking about leaving them genuinely hurts.
And finally: the kids have to change schools.
Not long ago I was bragging to anyone who’d listen: Niuniu got into one of the best private schools in Seattle. How hard is it to get in? The acceptance rate is 3% — lower than Harvard’s.
Four months in, and we’re walking away. It feels like throwing out a winning lottery ticket.
The good news: Austin has excellent schools too, and through the new job we connected with a genuinely fascinating new one.
Fascinating, because their teaching method is truly ahead of its time. I’d bet money nobody reading this has heard of anything like it.
When I first heard their philosophy I was startled — and then found myself nodding along. But actually sending my kids there to learn? My stomach was doing flips.
Giving up a hundred-year-old school with a century of receipts to be lab rats at a brand-new experimental one — is that a rational move?
We got our answer last week, when we toured Austin and Niuniu and Niumei each spent a trial day at the new school.
They loved it. More than the Seattle private school, even.
So I made the call: we’re transferring.
AI is going to sort, reshape, upgrade and retire everything traditional — tear down the old, build the new. A top-to-bottom remodel of daily life is only a matter of time.
Schools won’t be exempt. A famous name is precious, but in the end schools will have to bend with technology and change — and give kids growing up in this new era an education that actually fits them.
I believe that. That’s why I’m jumping into this wave and taking on a new challenge.
So my kids breaking with convention to try a brand-new kind of school? Seems only fitting.
A new adventure begins.
I’ve taken plenty of leaps in my life, and I’ve never regretted one.
This time, I can’t wait either.
I know you’re dying to hear about this school. Niu-ma will keep you in suspense a little longer — this month is absolute chaos, but once I come up for air I’ll tell you everything.
