Change from Without with Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham
Brennan Guidry [00:40:09]
Well, not for Spectrum Fusion, but I have done that before. A lot of that at my Houston Community College in the film program, I I’m one of the few students that’s known to do kind of crazy visual effects, kind of like making portals and whatnot.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:40:29]
Very cool. Sounds like fun stuff.
Brennan Guidry [00:40:32]
One of the shoots I did, I bought a green the suits and zip up and cover your entire body. And I basically use that as a green screen matte.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:40:42]
So you can be like Invisible Man.
Brennan Guidry [00:40:44]
Yeah, pretty much.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:40:46]
Well now how did you figure that out? How do you figure out how to do that?
Brennan Guidry [00:40:51]
Well. I think it just some some of it happens to be like an accident. I came across a one of my first projects we had to do kind of it was a horror film and whatnot. Sometimes it’s, I guess what you can say, happy accidents and you accomplish that particular effect that had the door moving with nobody there and a mistake happened. And then that’s when it clicked that I could use a kind of morph suit thing.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:41:27]
Oh, really cool that you recognize that because, you know, there are lots of happy accidents in this world. Penicillin was a happy accident. X rays were a happy accident. Post-it notes were a happy accident. It’s it’s figuring out what to do with the quote unquote failures and turned them into successes. That that that’s kind of the difficult part. And the fact that you could do that was really awesome. What’s your dream job moving forward? What is it that you would love to be able to do in this space?
Brennan Guidry [00:42:03]
Well, I can’t really say I’m really going really have a goal to be in Hollywood or anything. That’s a little bit too crazy for me at this point. But I really want to go into broadcast, I guess, just how I was raised. I, like my father is an engineer, so I’m more leaning towards more corporate side of things. So doing commercials and stuff is just kind of how I’m familiar with and going into sports, either sports broadcasts or just a local TV station. Last spring I interned interned at one of the local TV stations and that’s kind of where I want to end up, is kind of a corporate environment mixed with film.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:42:46]
We’ll certainly don’t ever apologize for making your own choices. I mean, people who want to be in Hollywood and who thrive in that environment —great! People who feel like a different environment is a better environment for them. Perfect. I mean, to know what you want and then to go for it. That’s that’s the key to this this time we have here on Earth. So I think it’s great that you’re understanding where you want to go when you’re taking the steps to get there. It’s really awesome.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:43:10]
And then we have one more person who just wants to say hi.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:43:12]
Thanks so much for sharing your story.
Brennan Guidry [00:43:13]
Thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:43:15]
Absolutely.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:43:16]
This is the man that I told you about that, who is learning about the computer.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:43:21]
All right. Welcome.
Harvey [00:43:26]
I’m the perfect blank slate. All I’ve done is work for or do without or I’ve never done part time jobs since ’98 or I’ve done eight years of work directly on rigs.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:43:41]
And then, Harvey, everything that you just received, your autism diagnosis after many years of not knowing.
Harvey [00:43:48]
I’m sixty-six years old and Oil-Field, I very, very early on, I accidentally invented a very, very, very effective safety program I prevented. But what is it?
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:44:03]
Well, you can say don’t swear.
Harvey [00:44:05]
Oh, I prevented a huge amount of hits and near misses. Serious accidents.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:44:14]
Harvey’s about safety, he knows a lot about safety.
Harvey [00:44:17]
Well, the offshore drilling rigs and oil subsidies, we’re talking about five years and up one, two and a half years on oil service rigs. And there was no organized instruction at all how how to do the job, how not to do it or not organize safety.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:44:36]
And now Harvey what are we? And now we’re getting into what, the welding program?
Harvey [00:44:42]
Yeah, I’m going. Well, I’ve done two hundred hours of two and three inch build up the best kind of horse fence around. And we started panch fishable and I actually stick welding
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:45:01]
All right. Well, thank you.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:45:03]
Thank you so much, Harvey. I really appreciate that.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:45:05]
He’s he’s so his memory is amazing. And so I guess you can see everybody has a little bit of a different specialty and different, you know,.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:45:17]
I might have been better served by not learning how to use a phone in a laptop because my memory is in the phone and the laptop. Yeah. When I was a graduate student first time around, we had to learn how all of these things I was studying, astronomy and astrophysics. We had to learn all of these things about different, you know, the mass of suns and planets and things like that. And I knew what those numbers were. And you could use those to to be kind of jumping off point for doing estimates and calculations. And now, like, I literally have to ask my son what his phone number is because I just push a button that says call him.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:45:52]
Yeah, I know.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:45:53]
I don’t even dial his phone number anymore.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:45:54]
So just like the London cab drivers, they know every street. Right. You can just jump in and say, I want to go to Row Street, and they’ll know where it is.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:46:05]
Yeah, that’s amazing. People will ask me if I’ll pick up one of my daughter’s friends. And where do you live? Like, oh, such and such street know where that is. No, it’s not one of the five main streets in town. No, I don’t know where it is because we have all these little cul-du-sacs in the suburbs and if you don’t live there, you never go there. You don’t even know the streets exist so well. Anyway, thank you for bringing those folks on. That is really great. And as folks could tell, we’ve got we’ve got folks with different levels of communication. It’s called the spectrum. Right. And and everyone is finding their their level and finding their place and finding what they can do to to contribute to their own happiness, to our society’s benefit. And I think that’s wonderful.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:46:50]
Thank you. And so really, people can find us at SpectrumFusion.org, and they can if they have an opportunity for somebody on the spectrum or they need content or they need a video or they need we have voiceover artists. We have scriptwriters.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:47:05]
We want to ask about the other side for a quick second. That is after all of this, I mean, you’re doing some great work out there. If someone wants to help out Spectrum Fusion, if they want to contribute, if they want to be a partner of any sort, how would you have folks like that get in touch with you? What’s the best way to do that?
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:47:24]
So that we really are looking we need an army because like I said, we don’t charge for our services. And so we’re very different in that way. And we believe that this is something that the community can do. We can come together, we can harness, like I say, that power and the energy of community and collaboration providing connections. So, Heidi@SpectrumFusion.org, is one way to reach me, but it’s so we would we welcome volunteers, anybody who might have some time that they could even listen to some of their proposals or help write scripts. That’s the other thing, or to proofread scripts. But we need all sorts of volunteers or people to provide connections. That’s the other thing. And so you work locally in Houston, right? Yeah, but we have people, participants in Kentucky and New York.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:48:16]
Oh, awesome. That’s where folks on the spectrum that are.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:48:21]
Yes, that’s a we have somebody in Indiana who is a graphic designer and he’s looking for work. We have somebody in Kentucky, she’s an illustrator and she’s looking for clients and we hire her. And that’s the other thing I pay. We pay the participants, as I mentioned, for their work and for their projects. Right. Because they are professionals.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:48:43]
So absolutely. And then obviously from some of the sources, if you’re doing good work. So so, yeah. If you want to contribute time, if you want to, if you have an internship or or something like that available or is. You want to actually contribute financially to the organization, I’m sure that that Dr. Ham would love to hear from you. And again, you said this, Heidi@SpectrumFusion.org, right?
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:49:10]
Yes. And if you’re a student, so I have four PhD students from the University of Texas Medical Branch, one from Texas Women’s University. And we have business students. So if you are a student and you’re looking for an internship, this could also be something that we could do because I’m connected to Rice University.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:49:28]
And in general, SpectrumFusion.org is the place to learn all about the great work that you guys are doing there. Is that right?
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:49:36]
That’s right.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:49:37]
OK. And then you told me that you were on every place else under the sun. So drop off those handles for everybody. Tell them how they can reach you on all the other things.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:49:45]
All right. Facebook we’re SpectrumFusionUS. OK, Instagram: SpectrumFusion. That’s easy. Twitter: Spectrum_Fusion. I’m also on Twitter as @DrHeidiHam and YouTube: Spectrum Fusion. That’s an easy one. So a lot of them were just Spectrum Fusion. So YouTube, check that out, because I think they’re uploading videos all the time and there’s some fun ones behind the scenes.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:50:12]
That sounds just wonderful. Again, as I mentioned earlier, I do I’ve chosen to do this work with Dissertation Done because of what folks that are in doctoral degree programs have in their minds that they can do to help the world. And I don’t know if I’ve seen a better example of someone that’s going out there and helping make the world a better place. I honestly don’t. I really appreciate what you’re doing for you.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:50:39]
Thank you.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:50:40]
And, hey, we might even ask you to volunteer with your script, and I wish I had of creative talents that these folks do. And quite honestly, I’m looking at all the things are doing saying, well, those guys I have trouble doing.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:51:00]
Certainly, certainly we’re so grateful that you gave us the opportunity and that we could share our voices. And who knows who this will reach. You never know. Right.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:51:12]
And the reason why I did and just to to make it very obvious to talk to folks is because our dissertation students and folks who do enjoy listening to this podcast, they’re often people who who are either trying to get their doctoral degrees or who have gotten their doctoral degree. And one of the reasons why they did that is because they knew that there would be more opportunities out there available for them. And just to share the breadth of opportunities that people have found or created for themselves, as you have in this case, is I think it’s inspirational. What you’re doing is great. And I’m glad we were able to give you a platform to talk about it today. But I think you’re also going to be inspirational for someone who’s out there working on his or her doctoral degree right now saying, yes, I got to get this finish so I can do that kind of thing. It might not be the next Spectrum Fusion, but it’ll be what they want to do. And that’s the point.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:52:02]
Yes. And you can that and and I think having your Ph.D., that does give you the credibility and people will listen. And that helps when you’re trying to change the world in traditional systems, too.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:52:16]
Yeah, there’s a there’s a chair at every table if your first name is doctor.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:52:19]
Although, my friend, when I graduated. I said, but you’re not a real doctor. You know, there’s always one of those.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:52:27]
I like to flip the script and say, no, you’re not a real doctor. You didn’t write a dissertation.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:52:33]
And my supervisor, she’s now the head of neuropsychology, but she’s at Medical College of Wisconsin. But she said, yeah, but we teach the doctors right now.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:52:44]
I remember. Do you remember the Far Side cartoons? So there was a bunch of people at a — what looks like a restaurant. But then you could see that on the on the the window you had written backwards faculty club. So it was like on the outside of window it said faculty club. So so you can tell it was a university setting and there was a person there was there was a person on the ground like laying down maybe holding their throat or something like that, and a bunch of guys in tweed jacket standing over them and the person on their knees over the person who’s on the ground is like, no, no, a real doctor.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:53:26]
Exactly!
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:53:26]
But again, Dr. Ham, thank you so much for joining us. I’ll remind folks again real quickly that this episode was brought to you by Dissertation Done. So if you are an adult doctoral student, whether you are about to start the dissertation process, you’re just in your doctoral degree process. You’re struggling through the dissertation process or you’re thinking about dumping the whole thing. Reach out to us at DissertationDone.com/done. And we’ll see if you’re a good fit for our Fast-Track Your Dissertation coaching program, get you through graduation as quickly as possible. And if you’re out there already living your unconventional life. Put it down in a book, will take you from blank page to published author in a matter of weeks and you can find out more about that DissertationDone.com/book again. Dr. Ham, thank you so much for being here with us today.
Dr. Heidi Stieglitz Ham [00:54:13]
Thank you. Have a great day.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:54:15]
You as well. And everyone else out there go out and live your unconventional life.
Outro [00:54:25]
This has been an unconventional life. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, subscribe now to keep getting inspirational stories of unconventional lives as soon as they’re released. Until then, go out and live your best unconventional life.
