Animal Instinct
Jack Metelski ’15 needed to buckle down. He wasn’t doing particularly well in PSYC 150, an introductory psychology course in Love Auditorium. He figured his back-row seat wasn’t helping matters, so halfway through the fall 2011 semester, he relocated to the third row. It didn’t hurt that his new seat was next to a cute redhead he’d been eyeing since the start of the semester.
Nicole Hawkins ’14 noticed Jack, too — but mostly for his sock collection.
“He showed up to every class with these festive socks with different animals on them,” she recalls. “It was a conversation starter, for sure.”
The classmates quickly became study partners and then, fast friends. They grew even closer that summer, when they completed internships in New York City.
Nicole, who was commuting from her family’s home in New Jersey to her internship with an insurance company, helped Jack, a Virginia native working in ad sales, explore the city. They frequently met for dinners and “just hung out,” says Nicole.
Back on campus in the fall, their friendship was a source of well-meaning jabs from friends.
“Jack taught me how to golf at Seven Oaks, he’d take me to breakfast at the Colgate Inn, and all our friends thought I was leading him on,” she says. “I’d say, ‘No, he knows we’re just good friends!’”
Jack says he did know Nicole considered their relationship a friendship — but he also knew he wanted it to be more.
His patience paid off. By the winter of Nicole’s junior year and Jack’s sophomore year, the couple’s frequent study sessions in Case Library helped her realize her feelings for Jack had become romantic.
“He was so easy to be around and talk to, and the time I spent with him was always the best part of my day,” she says. “I told my friends it was like I had a revelation.”
She shared her epiphany with a (thrilled) Jack just before leaving campus for winter break, and they were off to the races — literally. The new couple began training for the Philadelphia Marathon. Though running had long been a hobby they pursued individually (Nicole had led the Colgate Running Club as a junior and senior, and Jack helped plan their routes), it was Nicole’s idea to start running with a goal in mind.
“Nicole is probably the only person who could force me to run outside in the sleet in Hamilton, N.Y.,” says Jack — who finished slightly behind his girlfriend and training partner in the Philadelphia Marathon in fall 2014.
After graduating, they moved to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where Nicole worked as an occupational therapist and Jack in wealth management.
A surprise proposal at a hotel resort in Connecticut kicked off nearly two years of wedding planning — and an unexpected choice of venue.
“We knew the city would be a good middle ground for our families and friends, so I was looking at venues in New York Magazine one day and saw something about the Central Park Zoo. It just clicked.”
Not only were they both animal lovers (their favorite dates were visits to zoos and wildlife preserves), but Nicole also thought the locale was the perfect nod to the quirky critters on Jack’s socks that sparked their very first conversations.
Their celebration at the zoo in June 2022 featured plenty of Colgate friends — including Jack’s groomsman Jack Galvin ’15 and Nicole’s “man of honor” Alex Fisch ’14 — and a sea lion show during cocktail hour.
“The wedding was exactly what we were hoping for,” says Nicole. “A really fun party with our families and friends, and no stress. I was just so excited that I finally got to marry my best friend.”