Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana. Clark Kent and Superman. Donald Glover and Childish Gambino. Â
Natalie Merrill and … Nat at Nite? Â
The same way that Miley becomes Hannah when she puts on the wig, or Clark Kent becomes Superman when he takes off his glasses, I become Nat at Nite the second I pull my camcorder out of my purse. Â
At some point during my senior year of high school, I inherited my dad’s old camcorder that used to be used to film our family videos. I recorded some footage of my friends and I throughout our last month of high school, which made for a couple of cute TikToks. But once I came to college, the camcorder sat in my desk drawer collecting dust for the whole first semester. Until one day in February 2022 when my friends and I thought…what if we took it with us on a night out?Â
The camcorder quickly got a lot of attention from people, and I decided to bring it back out the next night as well. On Sunday, I edited the footage into a montage of our weekend. I knew I didn’t want the video on my main account, so I decided to make a separate Instagram account dedicated to the videos from my camcorder. What to call it? My friend Kristen came up with the idea of “Nat at Nite,” inspired of course by Nickelodeon’s Nick at Nite. And thus, an alter ego was born.  Â
Nearly every time I’ve gone out since that weekend, the camcorder has come with me. The account now has about 40 montages posted and nearly 200 followers. Nat at Nite has introduced me to a lot of people (I even used it as a way to start my first conversation with my now-boyfriend, but more on that in a later article). As cheesy as it might sound, my college experience would not have been the same without Nat at Nite. Â
I now have four years of college documented through footage. I’ve spent the last few months going through this footage and getting ready to make one final montage from freshman to senior year. As I work my way through the clips, I can see myself fall more in love with this school and the people around me. I can see my friendships develop and deepen. I can see the different places that I’ve lived and people that I’ve lived with. I can relive some of my core memories. Of course, sometimes the videos can be hard to watch between the feeling of nostalgia and the physical cringing at my 18-year-old self. But I’m grateful to have these mementos. Â
I love that when I enter the bar, I am no longer just Nat. I love having an alter ego, but more importantly, I love the fact that Nat at Nite has been created and encouraged by its fans, my friends, throughout the years. Nat at Nite may retire when May 18 rolls around, but her videos will live on forever. And that, to me, is one of the things that I am most proud about in my time here at St. Bonaventure University.Â