The Little Things Are the Big Things
My Rosie is 10. She has “the scientist” in her; she loves making slime, mixing it with perfume and lotions. My eldest, Sharon, is 13. When Sharon noticed our clothes dryer wasn’t working properly, I told her, “Mommy is an engineer. If I can fix things, you can too.” So Sharon watched a YouTube video and took apart the dryer to fix it. Then, when the dishwasher stopped cleaning the dishes, she fixed it too.
Like my daughters, exercising curiosity and a natural desire to fix problems is what I find the most fulfilling in my job as a technical specialist at Atmus. And throughout my 14 years here, I’ve discovered an important parallel between my personal and professional lives.
Whether I’m at work or enjoying time with my family, I’m surrounded by the foundational truth that even the smallest things can make all the difference: to our success or failure, to our support or isolation, to our progress or decline, to our efficiency or downtime, to our motivation or frustration, and to our well-being or ill health.
For perspective, the average human hair is about 60 microns in diameter. The naked eye can see about half that: a 30-micron diameter object. My technical work concerns things that are much, much smaller.
Nanofiber, which is used in our NanoNet filters, is about 200 times finer than the average hair strand. This microscopic precision enables NanoNet filters to trap 98.7% of all particles as small as 4 microns. Working with NanoNet — though small and seemingly insignificant — can have huge effects downstream. In one case, my team made media modifications to meet a customer’s need. The result? We preserved the protection of NanoNet and increased the filter life by 200 to 300%.
Adaptions, even small ones, can result in significant impacts. And they’re not limited to the technical. It’s often the little adjustments and extensions of grace and flexibility that can make all the difference — especially as a working mom.
In 2011, I had just completed a seven-month co-op program and accepted a full-time position at Atmus, when my eldest daughter was born two weeks early. I chose to nurse her, and pumping was a difficult alternative. I lived just 10 minutes away from our office, so I asked my boss if I could take a break every three hours to nurse at home. Thanks to that small adaption built on trust, I was able to nurse each of my three daughters for two full years.
Another time, a co-worker realized I was pregnant before I did. As soon as my team knew, everyone started taking care of me. In one instance, I needed to give a presentation a few hours away. They drove me there and often asked if I needed anything. Their consideration warmed my heart and made me happy to come to work every day.
My youngest daughter is now 4 years old. And my work flexibility allows me to balance and protect what’s most important to me: my family and my career. That balance allows me to pass down the knowledge that my daughters can be engineers, artists, slime-makers, mothers and creative, capable problem-solvers.
We often assume the “big” things in life are the most important. But at Atmus, being a working mother of three has taught me otherwise. It’s the people we work with, and the tiny ways they treat you well, day in and day out — especially when under stress — that have the biggest impacts on your mental health and career performance.
The little things are the big things.