When Andrew Perticone came to NuVu in 10th grade, it involved a deal he made with his parents—one he didn’t expect to amount to much of anything. Instead, that deal became the start of everything.

Temporary Solution

Andrew’s 9th grade year at a private school was an unhappy one. Although his grades were fine, he found himself unmotivated and depressed. His parents struck a deal with him: for 10th grade, give NuVu a go for six months while they applied to other private schools in the area. Andrew reluctantly agreed.

What happened next was as unexpected to Andrew as it was to his parents—his applications to those other private schools were denied. Suddenly, he was forced to take his time at NuVu more seriously, and the result was that his work—and his connection to the NuVu community—deepened.

“As I spent more time here, I really fell in love with the community,” recalls Andrew. “I think NuVu has a really great student culture, and there's a lot of really talented people here. So I started doing more interesting projects my second year because I was like, ‘well I guess I’m going to stay here.’”

Andrew found himself putting more effort into his projects and embracing the design process in ways he never expected. He also began forming relationships with fellow students that he had held back from during his original six-month trial. “I started to make some really amazing friends that second year, because at first I was a little worried about growing too close to anyone, but soon I formed really deep bonds here.”

One of his biggest discoveries, once he committed to the work, was how much “free” time he had. “At the beginning, I probably didn't utilize that free time as best as I could,” he admits, “but as I developed my interests in the studio more, it gave me an opportunity to work on the things that I love outside of school when before I would just be too tired. I would start something at school and I would still have the energy when I get home to work on it. That's probably what surprised me the most.”

Game On

When Andrew first came to NuVu, game design was his single-minded interest. But as he learned other skills through more diverse projects, he discovered those new interests didn’t take away from his game design goals—but instead reinforced them.

“I learned so much about general design that was surprisingly applicable to designing games,” he says. “I discovered these really amazing core skills, such as how to receive feedback, how to give feedback, how to synthesize that feedback, as well as how to give presentations on what your project is, how to ideate on your ideas—all those things that I was not good at when I came to NuVu. I started developing more and more to the point where I was like, ‘oh, I've had my first few OIs and now I can actually start designing games.”

One of his favorite Open Innovation (OI) projects was a game made in Godot (a free, open-source game engine designed for creating 2D and 3D games and applications). Along with three other student game developers, they set out to independently improve their Godot skills. “We made a surprisingly full game and I was really proud of how it turned out.”

Deep Dive

Although NuVu is a place where students can deep dive into subjects they love, they are still challenged to expand their knowledge beyond their own interests. Take a design studio taught by coach Ryan Ferguson.

"I think Ryan is just such a spectacular teacher. But almost all of his studios have to do with things that I'm not usually interested in,” admits Andrew. “Studios like designing furniture or playgrounds are way outside of my usual expertise. But through his studios like Ready to Play Furniture—which was making furniture that was designed to be multipurpose and fun to interact with—I discovered that designing furniture meant to be played with is just another form of game design. It's like furniture game design. You have board game design, video game design, and now we have furniture game design.”

A big takeaway was that the skills he learned in furniture making made their way into his game design work. The cyclical nature of learning at NuVu builds on those skills and evolved his learning.

Next Up

After graduation, Andrew will be attending RIT for game design and development. He attributes this not only to the skills he’s refined during his time at NuVu, but also the support he received—especially from college counselor Jeremy Adams.

“Jeremy is such an amazing college counselor and he really helped me,” says Andrew. “I only applied to two schools. I applied to Clark and RIT, which are both in the top five in the US for their design and development programs. And I got into both.”

Self-Motivated

A theme often heard from students at NuVu is that self-motivated individuals are the ones who excel. Andrew says that if you're not interested in becoming your best self every day—and not inspired to improve and grow—NuVu might not be for you. But he offers a caveat.

“You don't have to be at that point when you come to NuVu,” he admits. “I certainly wasn't. But now, if I have 15 to 30 minutes of free time every day, I sit down and I, on my own, try to learn something that I didn't know before. And if that sounds like something that you can do in the future, then I think NuVU is for you.”

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