Ever wondered about the creatures that roamed our planet millions of years ago? Let’s discover the fascinating field of paleontology. 🦴⛏️
Paleontology is the study of prehistoric life through fossils 🦖, the remains of ancient plants and animals preserved in rock. As a paleontologist, you get to be a detective of the past, uncovering and analyzing these fossils to reconstruct the evolution of life on Earth.
Virginie Bouetel is a scientist passionate about science communication and paleontology. She tells us about her journey and passions in this wonderful interview.
My name is Virginie BOUETEL, I live in Anglet, in the south west of France. I have a PhD in science and more precisely in Paleontology which I have defended in 2005 at the MNHN (Museum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris). The subject of my PhD was the anatomical evolution of baleen whales from Miocene to nowadays.
Found of communication, I also have graduated in a Master in Communication at the CELSA, Paris in 2012.
I am a teacher, I give private lessons in English, French, and Sciences. I am also a part-time professor at the local university (UPPA, Anglet) where I teach sciences outreach and teaching methods to License students, and Communication and Project management to Masters students. I regularly translate science article from English to French in order to share science news with my non-English speaking network. I enjoy organizing and leading shore discovery visits with kids and adults.
I don’t work for one particular organization.
My mission
I have always been found of sharing knowledge. Motivated by Aristotle’s quote “Progress that is not shared with not worth it”, I believe knowledge must be shared with everyone. Sharing knowledge relies in having the ability to read, speak, write and understand what our world is made of. It also means having a critical thinking it order to analyze all sources of knowledge.
I have had the chance to grow up in Africa, and thanks to my mother, who was a nurse originally, but who made the effort to be my teacher when there was no school in the countries we lived in. She made sure I had a fully achieved basic education, that is French, English, Math, sciences, history and geography. My father was a doctor in the army. They taught me respect, curiosity and I certainly owe them the kind person I have become.
I wish all kids could have the same education in order to be able to carefully analyze what happens nowadays on our planet and be future respectful leaders.
That’s why I am so delighted to teach. I am currently a full-time teacher/professor. I would say that thanks to all my teachers in the past, I have enjoyed learning, and this led me to teaching. Actually, I was not aware of this “talent” of mine. My friends at work, when I was a project manager at the Museum, asked me to help their teenagers in French, English and sciences. I was then 30 years old. Willing to help as many other people did for me when I was these teenagers’ age, I accepted.
A day with me
Oh dear, this is going to be fun! A typical day starts around 9 am, when I start the day with private courses to kids who encounter issues in learning French, English or in understanding these same subjects and also sciences. I give from 1 to 6 hours of private lessons every day. It means searching or creating teaching documents, pictures or experiments. I usually teach at university in the afternoon, from 2pm up to 7pm sometimes.
Some days, of course, I don’t teach. When necessary, I work as an administrative and financial secretary. But this is rather a “day job”. I am not always delighted by this type of job, but one has to comply with life needs sometimes.
I live in an area where sciences and associated knowledge do not seem major in the eyes of the public authorities. It is thus difficult to find a full-time and stable position in the domain here. As a consequence, one must show its ability to adapt to local situations and sometimes accept poor jobs in order to earn a living and ensure its survival.
My current projects
One year after the end of my PhD, I got a call from one of my tutors at the MNHN. He was looking for a project manager to take care of SYNTHESYS. This European scientific program aims at supporting European researchers who need to visit natural history collections. Fluent in English and found of sharing all the people and things I knew at the MNHN, I took the job.
My missions were mainly to put the local researchers and technicians in contact with other European researchers and technicians in order to create collaborations and help them work together: mailing lists, informing external researchers and students about the program, helping them write their applications, providing them with supporters, organizing the bi-annual jury in order to select the applications that would be funded. Then organizing the visits at the MNHN for the researchers which applications had been selected. Willing to make the program more popular among the museum staff members, I have organized SYNTHESYS mini-meetings, which took place as afterwork meetings in a nearby pub. Anyone could join and speak about its research or job at the museum. This event gathered quite a lot of people, up to 50 sometimes, and led to interesting and often unexpected collaborations.
Synthesys also aims at improving collections' management. As such, my mission was also to inform and encourage researchers and technicians who actively worked with collections, not only in the fundamental research, to participate to workshops focusing on collections management. Networking, improving access to collections, digitization of collections, databasing...
I have been delighted to be a member of the SYNTHESYS family for 10 years.
What I would say to small Virginie
I would probably encourage her to take the entrance examination to become a professor when she is around 30. Teaching needs a certain degree of maturity. I would not have appreciated teaching as much as I do nowadays when I was 20-25. It is sometimes as heavy as a priesthood… One must accept to being able to bring all the pupils to the expected level and goals. But teaching is really a rewarding mission. Teaching, to me, rimes with learning. If you are not ready to challenge or question yourself, then don’t become a teacher !
One thing I have learned while I was a guide or science explainer in various museums, and while teaching, is that not knowing is not dramatic. Socrates or another such eminent philosopher once said something interesting “One who knows what he knows, knows that he doesn’t know everything”. It is among my favorite quotes. It means you still have a lot to learn. And being a scientist taught me that what you may be sure of right now might be not so perfectly true tomorrow. Being a scientist has made me humble. And I believe this is extremely important when one wants to teach.
More, I remember that moment when I had almost finished writing my PhD thesis, and I was looking for quotes or some other phrases to add to my thesis as chapters headers. And one that seduced me is from the TV series CSI - The experts - Las Vegas, 2000:
- Gil Grissom : "You have doubts"
- Sara Slide : "Yes"
- Gil Grissom : "That’s is the best thing that can happen to a scientist".
This dialogue is my PhD thesis’s conclusion head and I could not have thought of a better one.
Growing up in Africa
I have had the privilege to grow up abroad, in northern African countries. I was often the only white kid and my parents were thus the only white adults in the places we live in. Illness such as polio and leprosy are disabling diseases of which many people, often kids, suffered. I have learnt to consider these people just like any other people.
I have educated so that I believe respect is a key to living together. But it also means mutual respect from me to others, and from others toward me. You respect me, I respect you, but one should not expect being respected if he or she doesn’t respect others.
My achievements
What an interesting and difficult question this is! Well, I guess I should be proud to have benefited the kind and supporting education my parents have provided me with.
Thanks to them, I have learnt English, which has always been one my most important talent or advantage. Over the ability to speak English, it has also made me discover an extremely rich multi-culture.
The education I have benefited has also made me the kind and understanding person I am. And looking at the world as it has become, especially after covid, and although I must admit I suffer from the selfishness that has developed among humans, I keep convinced that kindness, tightly linked to respect, is an essential element if one want to work and evolve positively nowadays more than ever.
But one would say that these are not achievements.
To be honest, I am extremely proud of having done my PhD. It has been difficult sometimes, delighting also, and it has “built” me in a way that I would not have expected. It is a very personal journey and if I had to do it again or even if I had to do another one, I would sign immediately.
I am proud of all the pupils and students that I have supported and accompanied in private lessons, at school or at university. They achieved their goals. They made me the proudest person in the world every time! I hope there will be many more in the future.
Outside of work
As I said previously, I am not easily bored, and by “bored” I mean someone who doesn’t occupy herself. Actually, even resting is an occupation if you want to do it well.
Aside my multiple jobs, I love reading books and cartoons, in English and French. I am found of stories with some magic, I really thrillers and other crime inquiries, but also dystopic books such as those by Azimov, Orwell or Huxley. I regularly read books or articles about famous scientists or people who have brought something major to the society, such as Neil Tyson De Grasse, Einstein, May Anning. Books by Stephen Jay Gould are always fascinating.
I am a fan of cross-stitching and knitting. I make tablecloths, plaids, cushions…
I enjoy thriller movies, and some soaps with crimes and scientists. I am a fan of the “Big Bang Theory”.
On holidays, I like going to Bali to snorkel in the lagoon. Just give me flippers, mask and a tuba, and I will be the happiest fish in the sea.
Listening to music is also important, mainly smooth music such as bossa nova and classical music. But I could not live without some rock’n’roll and jazz.
I regularly, when not busy, participate to community actions related to scientific knowledge sharing.
And spending some time with my partner and my family is essential to me of course.
Belancing work and life
I am a workaholic. Work, in my opinion, is important in one’s life since you play a role in the society, you participate in the economy, and you meet people, you interact with them. You get to learn things from every minute you live and sharing with others gives an unlimited opportunity to challenge yourself and to learn about everything. When you come back home afterwork, you are like a kid coming back from school, you have may things to talk about, how you have felt, what you have learnt, done, read… And your partner and family also have their daily events to share with you. That is wonderful !
Thus, when I don’t have a permanent job and stay at home, it definitely affects my private life. In order to avoid going around in circles, I always find a way to get busy at home: reading, translating an article, observing the aquarium to see what happens in there, watching a documentary, preparing courses. My brain is greedy. So, yes, I am workaholic !
Pieces of advice
I would advise anyone who is found of or curious about “nature” to remain curious and open minded. With internet, accessing knowledge, scientists, institutions information is made easier.
As Forest Gump said “life is box of chocolate, you never know what you gonna get”. Life is a long way along which you pick up all kind of objects, knowledge, experiences. You never know if and when it may be useful. But somehow all you learn about “nature” becomes useful on your daily life, in your job, or even at a party.
For example, I don’t know how many times, while at a party with some friends, an unexpected animals or plants would be noticed by someone. I would be called for identification, and my friends would be delighted to see that we live among “nature”. I remember, recently, a couple of friends came for a light diner at home, with their 2 years old kid. The evening temperature was rather warm, and suddenly, a chafer landed on the floor. My female friend was disgusted and almost frightened her kid. But I jumped of my sit, and gently picked up the chafer in my hand. My friends were astonished… I invited the kid to gently cuddle it with its finger. The kid had loving eyes while doing so. The mother wasn’t not that easy to convince, but the ended trying and was amazed of the softness of the little insect. I showed them it was a female chafer with an elongated extremity of its abdomen to lay eggs. These few minutes made my evening !
Whatever your dreams are, follow them. Be tough, but don’t forget to be kind with those who deserve or need your support. My parents, although they are far from perfect of course, have been very special models for me. They taught me to be curious, open-minded, honest, kind, patient and tough.
Be tough, stay curious, don’t give up, be kind to yourself, allow yourself to fail and learn from your failures.
And if you miss an opportunity, there will be many others !
Edited by Mazzarine D. Léa C. et Carolina C.
Find her here:
Web site: https://www.virginie-bouetel.com
Virginie BOUETEL: between paleonthology and communication.
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