Don't go into this if it's a "calculated" risk or if you need to evaluate "worth" in terms of financial benefits. It's really way too hard a journey for it to be valuable if it's primarily about the Benjamins. This has to be something you want to do because you enjoy the role, the job function. you'll be killing yourself, isolating yourself and depriving yourself of sleep and family events, through at least a decade of school and low paying training, and if you aren't enjoying it for reasons other than what your financial future may bring (which isn't even so certain in this era of bad job markets in certain specialties and with capitations and reimbursement cuts still looming for some fields) you'll end up hating life and probably never make it through. I know tons of people whose heart wasn't in it, quit, figured out another way to get that sport car, and are more happy for it.
If, however, you are like some of us and get some kind of sick pleasure out of running around a hospital all night trying to keep patients alive, or getting your hands dirty in the OR, or sticking lines, tubes, scopes, needles, scalpels into people, or just enjoy talking to sick, scared, crazy and/or often noncompliant people, then you'll have no problem. So get out there and shadow and volunteer and see what doctors actually do. Because that's what you'll be bargaining for, not the income. Thts th inly useul measure of worth, not a calculation. only if you come away thinking "this is way cool, I could totally see myself doing that kind of work for the next thirty years" should you proceed.
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