High School Teacher vs. College Professor

Submission 17,087

About

High School Teacher vs. College Professor is a dialogue-based meme comparing the generally strict attitudes of high school teachers and the relaxed attitudes of college professors.

Origin

Comparisons between high school teachers and college professors have long been popular. Jokes comparing the two have been packaged as relatable student content and have appeared online for several years. For example, a humorous piece on the differences between the two appeared on student-content media outlet The Odyssey^[1] on September 21st, 2015.

Spread

On January 23rd, 2016, YouTube channel loveliveserve posted a comedic video pointing out the differences between teachers and professors that gained over 720,000 views (shown below).

Dialogue jokes gained media attention after a flurry appeared on Twitter at the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year. Buzzfeed^[2] covered them on September 7th, 2017. Teen Vogue^[3] followed later that day. The earliest joke Buzzfeed aggregated was posted by @BasedGodJarrett^[4] on August 24th, 2017 and gained over 50 retweets (shown below).

Jokes to this effect are also popular on Tumblr. For example, a post by itsbetterthananal^[5] from February 9th, 2017 remarked on how much more relaxed college professors were as opposed to what their high school teachers warned by including an email from their professor announcing her absence which she signed "Mom." The post gained over 177,000 notes (shown below, left). A similar post by severus-snape-is-a-butt-trumpet^[6] detailed how his teachers warned against the strictness of professors while his professor apparently hits on him.