Furman Student Says Pathways Should Focus On Skills, Not Reflection.

Nathan Johnson '27 thinks that Pathways isn't an attractive program for most students.

Apr 01, 2026

Welcome to Perspectives on Pathways — a compilation of interviews intended to make public a wide array of viewpoints on Furman’s two-year advising initiative.

This week, we bring you the perspective of Nathan Johnson, a junior Politics and History major.

Johnson reflects on where he thinks Pathways falls short, arguing that the program functions as a safety net for unmotivated students while not serving the majority of the student body. For reform, he suggests shortening the program to two semesters and focusing more on career-related skills rather than personal values and vocation.

Read Johnson’s full interview below.

What was your experience in Pathways? Did it benefit you?

I think the first month or two was beneficial in that it forced me to get around campus. There was an assignment where I had to take a picture at a bunch of different buildings to prove I knew where they were. It helped me to get oriented, which was really great. But beyond that, I didn’t benefit much. It just felt kind of useless. I didn’t hate it, I just didn’t really see why I had to do it. I think a big benefit of a freshman seminar of any sort, educationally speaking, is having a cohort of students that you go through life and classes with, but there’s no really communal aspect to Pathways.

In terms of the information that they give you, it seems like they’re trying to tell you how to be a good person, and you can’t really teach someone how to do that in a class. There’s a lot of stuff about discovering your vocation and having respectful conversations, which just aren’t going to be taught in a decentralized curriculum once a week.

I can see how some students would benefit from Pathways, but we’re probably talking about the bottom quintile. Making a LinkedIn or a resume are things that most students will figure out how to do by the time that they need to do them. Pathways just functions as a safety net for the students that wouldn’t be motivated to figure things out themselves. Then all the other students are forced to do the same program, because the students that aren’t motivated to learn those skills aren’t going to be the ones to volunteer for a remedial life-practices course.

Do you know any students who view Pathways positively?

No, I do not. I don’t know any students that like it, and I haven’t talked to any peer mentors that seem to believe in it either. The peer mentors tend to like it because it pays well, and some think they might be able to make it better. I can’t say with certainty that no students enjoy it, but I’ve yet to encounter a student or a peer mentor that does.

Does Pathways have positive components?

Having to interview someone with a career I was interested in was really good. Being forced to give a speech about something in my personal life with my classmates was good practice. All of these are things which should be done earlier in the curriculum though. We did the speech on the last day of my class, and until then, I had not been close with a single other person or really talked with anyone in my class; after that, we all had things to talk about with each other and felt more companionship and common ground.

I will also say, one benefit of Clifton Strengths [a sort of personality test] is that they give you a structure and vocabulary for explaining your strengths and weaknesses in job interviews, though obviously not using the words that they give you. But if you read the description and reword it, that can help in articulating soft skills.

How could Furman make Pathways more substantial?

One thing they could do would be to lean more into the sorts of things they do at the beginning—generally orienting students to campus and introducing freshmen to the resources available to them. Then I would recommend gutting a lot of the personal values and vocation stuff, because I’ve yet to meet someone who has really benefited from those practices. I would also want to see a shift into how to do classes and academics, in addition to preparation for job and career.

I also think a lot of the things they do sophomore year should be done freshman year. You don’t need to wait till you’re a sophomore to talk to someone about a career or to put together a resume and LinkedIn. A lot of freshmen apply to internships for the summer, so why not cover those things sooner? Also learning how to comport yourself and brand yourself for an interview. Those seem like things aren’t going to come up necessarily in required academic classes, but they’re still good things to know how to do pretty early on. That’s why I think a two semester program, instead of a two year program, would be appropriate.

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