People change in medical school. I noticed it one day waiting for class and found myself marveling at how one of my classmates had morphed over the past two years. Beyond the dichotomy of whether that is good or bad, it just is.
When you strip away the expectations of parents, friends, family and others; social pressures to become a doctor; and all the hype...you are left with your own values, dreams, personality and the true self. In the stress of school, particularly in the aberrant pressure and competition against others for grades (our retarded system here), that true self is subject to change.
I have found that to be one of the great challenges in this endeavor and work daily to avoid the pitfalls of what I see around me both in classmates, and in the physicians I have worked with in the past. My goal is to emulate those that maintain that true "sane" self, and don't morph into another species, burn outs, psych patients or surgeons that throw instruments at unwitting nurses and equipment technicians.
Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness. 
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