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familylegacymemoir
The Return of the Good Student
The doctors called it a panic attack. It was more than that. In the hours afterward, I became obsessed with permanence.
February 23, 20266 min read|By Mike Chang
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The doctors called it a panic attack. It was more than that. In the hours afterward, I became obsessed with permanence.
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The doctors called it a panic attack. It was more than that - something complex, beyond the metaphysical, and out of this world that I couldn't comfortably sit with rationally. But one thing was certain: in my heart, I felt like that woman with the red Mini Cooper had saved me. I was sure of it.
In the hours afterward, while the world was still vibrating, I found myself flipping through a Mixbook of my children's photos. I just wanted to see them. I kept thinking: if it had ended there, on that day, what would they actually have?
I'd spent years in therapy untangling stories that were never told to me. If I vanished, I'd be leaving my kids with the same blank spots I had struggled to fill. I needed to leave evidence that I was there. Not for the history books, but so they wouldn't have to start from scratch.
I became obsessed with permanence.
I already knew the fragility of data. I had files saved from when I was eleven - decades of material stored in formats that could vanish with a spilled coffee or a head-crash. I wanted the "Cold Storage" philosophy of the crypto world - the fireproof certainty of steel - but for my soul. I wanted something my wife could just hold on to, and the kids could retrieve thirty years from now. Whenever they finally started caring. Someday, right?
My search led me to Dr. Barry Lunt. He was a professor at BYU who looked at data the way a geologist looks at a mountain. He wasn't interested in "the cloud." He was interested in rock.
He had co-invented the M-Disc. Standard discs use a dye layer that rots, but Barry's disc used a rock-like data layer. When a laser "burns" it, it physically etches the pits into a carbon-based material. It is a permanent, physical change.
The Department of Defense put it through accelerated aging tests: chambers at 85% humidity and 85°C. The standard discs failed immediately. Barry's discs didn't lose a single bit. We were talking 1,000-year reliability.
I prepped for our meeting for a whole week. I reserved a room in the local library and printed out hundreds of pages of his research. I am not a material scientist, but I tried to understand every word.
In that quiet room, I felt a surge of a feeling I hadn't touched since I was a kid in Taiwan - the pure, intellectual joy of being a "Good Student." It was the identity I had before immigration and social pressure pushed me into just trying to get by. In college, I'd been the student who skated by on talent and excuses, but here, I was falling in love with the work. I was stapling papers with a sense of joy, reciting Q&A to the empty walls, and quizzing myself on chemistry I barely understood. I wasn't checking boxes; I was mastering a legacy.
When it came time for the call, my social anxiety was peaking. I was stepping back into the world for something I actually cared about, and I botched the first meeting immediately. I messed up the time zone difference - Mountain Standard vs. Pacific - and sat staring at a blank screen for an hour. Shit.
It felt like a visceral flashback to every poor interaction I'd ever had with a professor. I was the kid who was late to class again, apologizing for my own existence. I felt the "bad student" label burning on my forehead before he even picked up the phone.
But when we finally got on the line, the academic lecture I expected never came. Barry was gracious. He didn't care about the missed hour; he cared about the missing century. As I stumbled through my questions, he stopped me. He didn't see the kid who couldn't read a clock; he saw an engineer and a father who had actually done the reading.
He put the stakes into perspective: "Let's say in 100 years Mike Chang becomes a famous person." He compared it to the letters of Lincoln or Reagan - primary sources we only have because they were written on physical media. Since almost all personal correspondence is email today, he warned that without intentional preservation, our generation's history will be a total void.
"The cloud," he warned, "is not a solution."
For the first time since the ambulance ride, things felt bright. I had the tax ID. I had the Professor's blessing. I had the Department of Defense testing to back me up. I finally had a name for the mission: Permanent Memory.
I wasn't just an engineer anymore; I was a guardian.
By the time I signed the contract for the San Francisco wedding fair, I was convinced I had the answer. I had the "fireproof" certainty for our history. I just had to show it to the world.
Last week: Times New Roman.