10 years of SeumasU

If you are fortunate enough to have any of our excellent merch, you might notice that it has an 'established' date of 2016. That was me trying to retroactively figure out when I started teaching online.

But actually on May 1st, 2015, I received a polite email inquiry from a woman inquiring about Latin lessons via skype for her son, in 7th grade. That was the first online student I took on, and we picked up Greek in 8th grade, and did both through until the end of high school. Thus began my online teaching career.

I mostly worked doing tutoring for the first few years, but in 2019 I launched online classes. So, I suppose as a one-man institution we are not at the ten year mark. 2019 was a bit of an experimental year, whereas in 2020 I went 'full-time' as Covid closed our worlds and online teaching exploded; my other work dried up and I took the plunge.

I want to take a moment here to do some public thanks to a lot of people who have encouraged me along the way. Some are teachers I have learnt from, others are students I've taught or continue to teach; others still are friendly voices in these spaces, and still others are just people I've learnt a lot from from more of a distance. Thanks firstly to my wife, who continues to back this crazy enterprise.

In alphabetical order, thanks to: Alyssa Barringer, Andrew Morehouse (and Ilse!), Brian Groneweller, Carla Hurt, Claire Mieher, Constantin Mihai, Eric Sowell, Gregory Stringer, Henry Quillen, Hugh McElroy, Irene Regini, Isaac Bennett-Smith, James Haney, James Tauber, Jessica McCormack, John Foulk, Justin Slocum Bailey, Keziah Armstrong, Marcello Lippiello, Michael Aubrey, Michael Kopf, Mike Saridakis, Rogelio Toledo, Sarah McCuan, Sharon Pederson, Sheila Morrisey.

I have almost certainly forgotten someone or someones, and important ones at that. I apologise! To all my students, thank you for signing up for my classes, putting food on my table, and making Greek and Latin come alive.

Hopefully in another 10 years I'll know what I'm doing.