Senior explores nature, media
Senior Margot Apothaker never shys away from a challenge.
- Students bring songs from The Attic
- Senior reflections of JanPlan in Nairobi, Part 2
- Sophomore receives Kennedy Center Award
If you have ever been to Philadelphia and/or seen the Rocky movies, you know that the city is about as easy on the eyes as Bowdoin’s prom queen. So it is no surprise that Margot Apothaker ’11, who hails from Bala Cynwyd, PA, a suburb of the City of Brotherly Love, developed a passion for exploring the outdoors. “I like having a scenic view,” she said.
Apothaker’s love for outdoor adventures know no bounds. She has hiked Mt. St. Helen’s, snowboarded the glacier at Whistler in the summer, rock climbed in Swamish, British Columbia, sand boarded the dunes of Oregon and surfed both coasts of the United States.
At the College, she is the president of the Mountaineering Club, a trip leader for the Colby Outing Club, and a COOT2 leader.
“[Being outside is] a lot more simple. I like turning off my phone and just enjoying being outside with a certain group of people. I like the challenge that nature poses, [in nature I can] push myself and see how much I can accomplish,” she said.
Apothaker has been an American studies major since her first year on the Hill, when she “fell in love with media studies and advertising” after taking a course on gender and pop culture. As she kept signing up for American studies classes, she realized that she “liked the gender aspect of [a lot of the] classes” she was taking, and decided to add a women’s, gender and sexuality studies (WGSS) major to her already full plate. She said that her American studies and WGSS classes “challenge the way [she] think[s] about everything in life.”
In lieu of studying abroad, Apothaker spent a semester at Colorado University at Boulder. This time away gave her a chance to take classes that don’t appear in the College’s course catalogue, including two classes in media and marketing, Media Ethics and Globalization and Gender and the Media.
“Media controls the world,” she said. “We are all influenced by it whether we like it or not…it is cool to study it and understand how people react to it.”
After college, Apothaker would like to apply what she has learned about the media in her classes to a career in marketing. However, she doesn’t aspire to be in the advertising industry so that she can have a corner office on Madison Avenue like Don Draper. She said that she would like to start out in the corporate world but, “want[s] to work for a non-profit eventually. After working for [a non-profit] in San Francisco [this January], I think that the work ethic [in that industry] is totally different. Lots of people who work there are interns or volunteers, so people work really hard and really well together because they are passionate about the organization.”
Apothaker also hopes that she can help affect change through her advertising. “One of the areas in which I think the advertising industry could improve is the way in which they portray women,” she said. However, Apothaker thinks that one company, Kotex, is taking the right approach in its portrayal of women. Its U by Kotex campaign is, “all about women not being embarrassed by their bodies. It encourages women to talk about their health,” she said.
Apothaker’s real dream is to serve as a contestant on the CBS reality show Survivor, and she predicts that she would beat her competitors handily. “I am really athletic, so I could do the physical challenges,” she said, “but I’d be awesome mentally…It’s all about making alliances, but at the same time being out for yourself.”
Michael Brophy '12
