Dedication – Nathan Lawrence

Perfecting the Putt

How I Changed My Practice Plans

My desire to play college golf started when I was a freshman in high school. I knew that I wanted to continue playing competitive golf, and Wesleyan posed as the perfect fit for my academic and athletic needs.

Once I arrived on campus, practices were starting nearly right away. I thought I was well prepared to compete, but I was met with an issue. My putting was very bad. I was able to be successful in youth golf and in high school by being an exceptional ball striker, but everyone in college is a good ball striker. I was very behind, and I needed to adjust quickly. One thing that I did to improve was practice putting every day after practice for an extra 30 minutes. While this doesn’t seem like a long time, doing it every day helped me make monumental strides in my putting. I used a putting aid most days, which had marbles on both sides of the putter head. If my putting stroke was too far to the outside or too far to the inside, I would hit one of the marbles.

After many hours of practice using this putting aid, I was able to catch up to the rest of my teammates, and later on in the fall, I made my debut at Hamilton, having qualified to play in the tournament. My improved putting allowed me to play in tournaments early on in my collegiate career.

My Summer in Wealth Management

About My Internship Experience

In the summer of 2025, I had the wonderful experience of interning at a wealth management company called Sardelli & Hutchinson Wealth Management. Through this experience, I developed a ton of skills that will help me manage the rest of my career at Wesleyan as well as prepare me for future internships or job opportunities. I started working at the end of May and I knew the very basics of wealth management but was willing to come in as a sponge and learn as much as I could from the advisors. Early on, there was a lot of training that I had to complete, learning some more things about retirement planning, estate planning, education planning, insurance, and a lot of information about regulations. I found those first two weeks very informational and it helped me learn the ropes, but I was also looking forward to being assigned work.

Around mid-June, I was assigned my first project. I was told to do some data entry in the software we used called eMoney Advisor. I was given a few info sheets from new-client meetings from the advisor I worked with and was tasked with inputting all of the information into our simulation program. While it wasn’t super difficult, it was tedious and I found myself getting crossed up with some overlapping information.

To help with this, I made a layout on a piece of paper and wrote everything out rather than trying to input everything right away. This allowed me to cross mistakes off and rearrange things without having to re-run the simulation. I was able to complete the task pretty easily using this method. Later on in the summer, the firm was rebalancing their positions in certain mutual funds, and I was tasked with finding replacement funds with similar fees as the ones we were replacing. I was able to gain knowledge on certain mutual funds as well as use Morningstar, a website that shows information about investments. It was a very interesting experience interning in wealth management, and I was able to learn a lot about the industry while building skills and experiences that will help me going forward.

Repetition to Rewards: A Summer Cutting Grass

How a Summer Job Shaped the Way I Think

In the summer of 2025, I worked for the Town of Northbridge, MA Department of Public Works, which is essentially the town department that does all of the public mowing and trimming of park and medians, as well as work on road and construction sites. I started off the summer working primarily in a graveyard, mowing the grass and trimming the grass around the gravestones. It started off to me as very repetitive work that was boring. The hot July summer was getting to me, and being outside for eight hours in the ninety-degree heat wasn’t exactly the best part of the job. I would often go to a waterspout and soak my hat so it would cool off my head when I put it back on. The only thing I would look forward to was listening to music on my Airpods as I mowed.

However, around halfway through the summer, I realized that work was starting to become interesting to me. I had a really good relationship with one of my coworkers, a retired painter. We talked a lot all day and it helped me feel excited to go to work. I still didn’t think mowing the grass was fun, but I started to take pride in the final results of the grass that I mowed. It occurred to me that after I had finished mowing a section, I would get super excited when the lines were done perfectly and when it looked very well done. I started using different mowers, including some larger mowers that cover more area, as well as trying new mowing patterns, just because it was really cool to see what results would come from it. I would leave work each day excited to go back the next day and get back on the mower because it meant I could relax, listen to music, and try to get better at what I was doing every day.