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An initiation ritual does something to your character structure --it adds something and it takes something away, making one's destiny more fated, more certain. My PhD was like that for me, because I wrote it in such a way as to take seriously Nietzsche's injunction, "live dangerously". This meant that my thinking was very independent indeed and far from academic assistance. The way this changed me was that I gained a hell of a lot of self-respect. I established my right to be thoroughly independent. What I lost through the thesis process was the sense that I was a particularly special person or that my ego amounted to very much. But these had been only Western ephiphenomena, not something real to a person of an African upbringing.  So I was much more gratified to be counted in the ranks of those who have thought and acted dangerously. I mean, bravely.