The article examines students' essay portraits of their favorite higher school teachers. These essays were submitted as a credit assignment in the course “Methods of Teaching Journalism in Higher Education” at the master's program at St. Petersburg State University. The essays were written in a free form. The research includes portraits written during the period 2021-2024. The texts were subjected to quantitative analysis according to a set of parameters, and the results were summarized in a table. Unlike typical studies of students' opinions about teachers, this research is based not on answers to standardized questionnaire, but on students' personal impressions. The aim of the study was to identify which qualities of a teacher make the strongest impression on learners, and to outline the optimal (from a student's perspective) style of communication between teachers and students. It turned out that ideally, students would like to see their professors as harmoniously developed individuals with high professional qualifications and bright personal features.