What should I know about linguistics?

I'm not sure if I want to pursue a future in linguistics, but I thought about it some and I think I might want to do something with it. I'm still pretty young, just starting high school and have plenty of time to make up my mind, but I take Spanish and Chinese right now and have a love for learning new languages. I really want to take French and Arabic in the future (I've already started lessons in Qu'ranic Arabic), then gradually study more specific languages and dialects after those. I would love to visit some place or live abroad some day, but at the same time I want to make sure I can do something constructive with my life and make use of any language skills I aquire. I'm also not sure about what higher education to pursue, and what colleges/ universities I should consider (anywhere- U.S., Canada, abroad), but I'm also not sure what kind of careers I should be thinking of. What do you think sounds best for me? Any ideas? Should I do linguistics? How can I find out?