I started giving campus tours as a sophomore and never really stopped. Now I work in the admissions office, which means I still give them, plus I answer the email. My best guess is somewhere past 1,100 tours. Every one of them walking backward.
October is the busy month. Seniors are deciding where to apply, parents have taken the Friday off, and on a good Saturday I have forty people following me across the quad while I tell them about the dining plan and silently count acorns behind my heels.
So here’s my actual fall script, Route B, admissions steps to the bookstore, about a mile and a half. The plain text is what I say out loud. The notes underneath are what I’m thinking while I say it. Most of what I’m thinking is about my feet.
Stop 0: The admissions steps
Script: “Hi everyone, welcome! My name’s on the lanyard. I’ll be walking backward for the next hour, which I promise I’m trained to do. If you see me about to hit something, please say so. Loudly. Parents, that’s mostly your job.”
Note: The shoes I’m wearing on this tour are new, and I picked them partly because of a name. APL calls their fall collection “Campus Explorations,” and one of the colors is literally called Campus. It’s a butter-cream knit. On the TechLoom Pro it comes as Campus / Ivory / Vine: cream upper, white sole, and a thin green stripe running along the midsole.
Last Saturday a mom asked if they were our school colors. Our colors are maroon and gray. I said “basically,” and kept walking.
Stop 1: The quad
Script: “This is the main quad. In about three weeks it’ll be completely orange, and our grounds crew will lose a war with the leaves. Over there is where people sit when it’s sixty degrees in March and everybody pretends it’s summer.”
Note: Here’s something nobody tells new guides. When you walk backward you land on the front of your foot, not your heel. My last pair wore through under the toes, while the heels still looked brand new. So the parts I care about are the forefoot and the toe box, not the heel.
The Pro has what APL calls “a slightly wider toe box,” an 8mm drop, and their Propelium foam all the way through. It weighs 7.9 oz. I’m not going to pretend APL designed a running shoe for walking backward in front of forty parents. They didn’t. But the wider front was the thing that made me order it over the narrower pairs I tried on in my head.
Stop 2: The library steps
Script: “Forty-one steps. I’m going to turn around for these, because the one rule they teach us in guide training is that we never take stairs backward. Ever. Then at the top I’ll turn back around, and you’ll pretend you didn’t see me face forward.”
Note: This is where I decided against the Bliss. It’s the lightest shoe APL makes, 6.8 oz, and in the Campus / Latte / Ribbed color it’s honestly the prettiest of the bunch. But it’s a slip-on with an elastic strap. That’s perfect for airport security and college fair season, when I’m in four cities in nine days. On a tour I want laces I can pull tight before the stairs.
Someday I’ll buy the Bliss for travel. For tours I need laces.
Stop 3: The dining hall
Script: “Okay, the question everyone has been waiting to ask. Yes, the food is good. The pasta station is the best thing on campus, and I will die on that hill. And yes, the meal plan is more than you were hoping.”
Note: Since we’re on money: here’s what the Campus colorway costs across APL’s fall lineup, as of October 16.
- TechLoom Pro, Campus / Ivory / Vine: $180
- Lusso Slide, Navy / Campus: $195
- TechLoom Bliss, Campus / Latte / Ribbed: $245
- Jogger, Greige / Heritage Blue / Campus: $320
- TechLoom Zipline, Cobblestone / Campus / Ivory: $350
That’s a lot of money for shoes, I know. Here’s the part that actually matters if you work at a school. APL has a Teaching-Staff Discount: 15% off for teachers, faculty or staff at K-12 schools and degree-granting universities. Admissions counts. You verify through SheerID, they email you a single-use code, and it expires 30 days after they send it. You can get a new one every 30 days. The only thing it doesn’t cover is gift cards. On the Pro that’s $153, before tax.
Two warnings from experience. Their FAQ says the code can take up to 24 hours to arrive and another 20 minutes or so to start working, so don’t verify at 11 p.m. the night before you need shoes. And my student guides should know their version is different: the Student Discount is also 15%, for high school and college students, but it excludes accessories, gift cards and the BCA shoes (that’s the pink Riviera they’re running for breast cancer awareness month). The staff page only excludes gift cards. That’s how I read the two pages side by side, anyway.
Stop 4: The lawn behind the science building
Script: “We’re cutting across the lawn, because the path is under construction. Watch your step, it rained Thursday. Prospective engineers, yes, someone has already complained about the drainage. In writing. Twice.”
Note: Cream knit plus a wet October lawn. I thought about that before I ordered, too.
APL’s care page says the TechLoom Pro, Bliss and Zipline can go in the washing machine. Cold water, quickest cycle, a small towel in with them, nothing else, no more than three pairs at once. A short spin is fine if it’s ten minutes or less. Then air dry, and never in the dryer or in the sun. They also say don’t mix light and dark colors, and Campus is about as light as it gets.
The Jogger is a different story. It’s suede, microfiber and mesh, and APL doesn’t put it in their machine-wash list at all. They point you to a cleaning kit instead. The Lusso Slide is Nappa leather and “should not be worn in or around water.” The Jogger looks great, but the slide stays in the dorm hallway.
Stop 5: The residence hall
Script: “This is a first-year hall. I’ll show you a sample double. It’s been professionally arranged by a student who’s being paid in pizza, so please keep that in mind. Your kid’s room will not look like this by November.”
Note: Sizing, because three people on my last tour asked about my shoes, not the room. All APL shoes are unisex. Women’s runs 5 to 11 with half sizes, men’s runs 7 to 14. To convert, a women’s 9 is a men’s 7.5, so drop a size and a half going from women’s to men’s.
I checked stock today, October 16. Every women’s size is in stock in all five Campus styles. On the men’s side, the Campus Jogger is out of a 7 and the Campus Zipline is out of a 14. My coworker Marcus wears a 14. He’s annoyed. The Pro in Campus still has his size, and I’ve told him that twice.
Stop 6: The bookstore (end of tour)
Script: “And this is where I leave you. The bookstore is open till five. Yes, everyone buys the sweatshirt. Yes, it shrinks. Thanks for walking with me, and good luck with your essays.”
Note: The boring stuff, which I wish someone had read to me before my first online shoe order.
- Shipping: free ground shipping in the U.S. on orders over $95, so every shoe on this list qualifies. Orders placed before noon Pacific usually ship the same business day. Ground delivery is usually 1 to 9 business days in the contiguous U.S., but they don’t guarantee it.
- Exchanges: free for U.S. orders.
- Returns: within 10 days of delivery, unworn, with the original shoebox packed inside another box. Mail-in returns cost $10, taken out of your refund.
“Unworn” is the important word. My system is to wear them around the office on carpet for one full day. If my toes are happy by four o’clock, they go outside, and after the first lap around the quad they’re mine.
Q&A (the questions I actually get afterward)
“Do you ever fall?” Twice. Once on an acorn, once on a very small child who walked right behind me. We were both fine.
“Doesn’t your neck hurt?” Not my neck. My calves, the first week of every September.
“Okay, so what did you actually buy?” The TechLoom Pro in Campus / Ivory / Vine, women’s 10, $153 with the staff code. I passed on the Zipline. At $350, or $297.50 with the code, it’s the one APL calls its “most advanced and bestselling” running shoe, and I’ll admit I keep looking at the Cobblestone / Campus / Ivory one. If the Pros wear through at the toes by spring like my last pair, the Zipline is next.
“Was it worth $153?” Ask me after the March Saturdays. That’s when we run three tours back to back and I find out what a shoe is really made of.
If you want to take the self-guided tour
Here’s the TechLoom Pro in Campus / Ivory / Vine (there’s a men’s toggle on the same page). And here’s APL’s whole Fall 2026 collection, with the Campus Bliss, Jogger, Zipline and slides mixed in with everything else. If you work at a school, find the Teaching-Staff Discount link at the bottom of their site before you check out, not after.
The photo up top is a stock shot of somebody else’s very handsome campus. Ours has more construction fencing.
Disclosure: those are affiliate links. If you buy through them I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Prices, stock, shipping, return terms and discount terms are what I saw on APL’s site on October 16, 2026. The discount math is mine and doesn’t include tax, so check your bag before you pay.