I love coming back to school. No matter how much I hate construction, classes and watered-down drinks, when I come back to Eastern I know every day is going to be interesting.

It also doesn’t hurt that the young women of this campus use the exceedingly warm temperatures as an excuse to display the tans they carefully cultured over the summer. I’ve noticed one thing while studying the beautiful specimens of the female species roaming the jungles of Eastern, however.

Shoes.

It’s bad enough that woman kind is general has a thing for high heels (mostly because mankind has a thing (ITALICIZE) for high heels). But women these days, especially in the 18-22 age bracket, are all about these shoes with stacked heels.

I don’t know how you all do it, ladies. I’m all about comfort, myself. Sure, I own a pair of slightly ill-fitting dress shoes, but I only break those out for special occasions, like bond hearings. Other than that, I’m sporting sneakers and nice boots.

And that seems to be the general rule for most other guys I see walking around. We’re fans of ridiculously high-priced shoes packed with air pockets, springs and high-tech rubbery plastic that weigh three ounces.

I’m not saying either of these observations is entirely true. Some girls like sandals or sneakers or well-worn boots, as do some guys.

But way too many of you young ladies are clod-hopping around in some faux (ITALICIZE) wood slip-on sandals with a four-inch thick sole. It hurts just to watch you all walk.

Is it comfortable, girls? Perhaps I’m wrong and it just looks uncomfortable. It certainly seems, however, that plenty of you are wobbling around or taking shorter strides or stiffening your legs to make walking on huge platforms possible.

I know those things kill your feet (and probably your legs, hips and butts, too). It’s not a secret. I was walking around St. Louis with a friend last week, and by 5 p.m. all she could talk about was getting the chunks of lumber off her feet in favor of the sneakers she’d left at the hotel.

Maybe it’s a height thing. Maybe it’s just the high heel look on steroids. And for the most part, the shoes aren’t bad-looking. I’ve got a pair of Nikes with an air pocket the size of an inner tube in the heel, and they’re soft and light as can be. My sister described them thus: “It looks like aliens took over your feet.”

Aesthetically, it’s completely objective. Some people think the Nike “boing” shoes are ugly as sin, but they are most assuredly comfortable.

So my conclusion is that it’s another manifestation of the female desire to sacrifice comfort for looks, much like plucked eyebrows, eyeliner pencils and tight skirts. I don’t know if it’s genetic or the influence of society and mass media or plain old masochism, but women in general seem to have a “damn my pain threshold” attitude about their appearance and these clogs are just the latest thing.

Me, I’ll stick with having extraterrestrial kicks.