and here's why I say so:

To be transformed by such a situation is normal, but usually it will not be in a GOOD way. For you it was.

That makes you an exception.
You had the street smarts and/or situational sophistication to take all that and imagine a better you that could come of it. Some people call that grace.
Philip Zimbardo would call it heroic.

As a social psychologist, I bring forth the power of situations to transform good people into evil, which is what I’ve been studying since my Stanford prison study way back in 1971. I argue that there are some features of special situations that can corrupt the best and brightest. Normal people, even good people. Not all, but most.

And the ones who resist, the ones who somehow have the street-smarts – the situational sophistication – to resist are the exceptions. In fact, I’m going to call them heroes.

. . .The issue then is, what is it about the particulars of that situation that was able to transform this person.

. . .My research really says several things.
One, that we have to recognize that some situations, some social settings, some behavioral contexts, have an unrecognized power to transform the human character of most of us.

Two, that the way to resist – the way to prevent a descent into Hell, if you will – is precisely by understanding what it is about those situations that gives them transformative power. It is by this understanding that you can change those situations, avoid those situations, challenge those situations.

And it’s only by willfully ignoring them, by assuming individual nobility, individual rationality, or individual morality that we become most vulnerable to their insidious power to make good people do bad things. Those who sustain an illusion of invulnerability are the easiest touch for the con man, the cult recruiter, or the social psychologist ready to demonstrate who easy it is to twist such arrogance into submission.

Liza, I can blog this separately and I mean to. The whole paper is so powerful. It has huge implications for transforming the education of children (our future citizens) and that's my focus as you know. But I just read it a few minutes ago and I HAD to put it here, now, first before all that.

Zimbardo concludes:

Right now my concern is just getting people to begin to think more and more about the ordinariness of heroes. . . We also have a notion of heroes as physical heroes – soldiers in battle, policemen, firemen at the World Trade Center – and surely they are heroes, there’s no question about it. But that sets a barrier between them and the rest of us, who are not in uniform, who have not had their training, or who are women, children and the elderly. . .

. . .going beyond words to changing real people and real institutions is a tall order. We are now talking about fundamental changes in society that can ultimately impact on our humanity. I hope to be a leader in this new revolution of making heroes more common, more prevalent, and more truly respected for the value they make in enhancing the human condition.

So in the tradition of this great situational psychologist and his new educational mission, I do see Liza as a hero. Sorry if that embarrasses her. But there it is.
{{{{}}}}