General Information about Item:

• Joke
• English
• United States

Informant Data:

• Christina Long is a Dartmouth ’18 from Ramsey, NJ studying Engineering modified with Computer Science.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context
  • This joke is meant to be shared amongst fellow engineers who can appreciate the self-deprecating nature of the joke, especially in an academic setting. Chrissy encountered this joke on the social media website Reddit, where online communities of engineers and some non-engineers can share jokes and other aspects of the engineering lifestyle with each other.

• Cultural Context

  • This joke relies heavily on the theme of self-deprecation, and that its characters include 3 engineering professors (not 3 professors of different disciplines) implies that its intended audience is made up of engineers. It is intended to be an in-joke that engineers share to acknowledge the difficulty of teaching engineering and laugh at themselves in good fun, not a mean-spirited insult of engineers from an outsider. Chrissy (and many other informants in this collection) encountered this joke on the internet, and the website Reddit in particular is well-suited to the propagation of folklore. Reddit creates internet forums for every conceivable topic or interest in smaller communities called “subreddits,” and the subreddits for jokes (and computer science and engineering jokes specifically) enjoy a lot of popularity from the engineers and some non-engineers who use the site.

Item:

There are three engineering professors on a plane that is about to take off. The pilot comes on over the intercom and gives out a special congratulations to these three professors because their own students have designed this very plane. Two of the professors begin to frantically unbuckle their seat belts and race for the exit. They turn around to the third professor who’s seated calmly and ask, “Why aren’t you running?” The third professor looks at them and says, “I know my students. This plane isn’t getting off the ground.”

Transcript:

• Stephanie: Can you tell me your name and background?
• Chrissy: I’m Christina Long, I’m a Dartmouth 2018, and I’m studying Engineering modified with Computer Science.
• Stephanie: Can you tell me a programming or engineering joke you’ve heard before?
• Chrissy: Yeah. So, there are these 3 engineering professors on a plane and the plane’s about to take off. The pilot comes on over the intercom and gives out a special congratulations to these 3 professors because it’s their own students who designed this very plane. Two of the professors begin to frantically unbuckle their seatbelt and race for the exit. They turn around to the third professor who’s seated calmly and they say, “Why aren’t you running?” The third professor looks at them and says, “I know my students. This isn’t getting off the ground.”
• Stephanie: [laughs] Can you tell me a little bit about.. uh, the background of the joke, why is it funny?
• Chrissy: It’s just kind of a self-deprecating joke to be shared among fellow engineers cause the implications are that the students are so utterly incompetent and the professors know it that they would build a plane that utterly fails.
• Stephanie: And where did you first hear the joke, and who told you?
• Chrissy: I think I read it online on Reddit.
• Stephanie: Alright, thank you!

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Collector’s Name: Stephanie Guo

Tags/Keywords:

• Joke. Engineering. Plane. Academia. Reddit.