I’m a highschool student and I know almost nothing about mandarin besides that it uses radicals and all that (like if a word is related to “sun” it would have that square thingy with a slash in the middle), apart from that I know nothing! i can obviously speak English as you can tell, but i am also fluent at Arabic if that happens to be helpful in any way. Any tips on where to start, which online courses you found helpful, how to build up vocabulary etc...

Apart from that, what kind of job or travel opportunities does mandarin open up? Is it worth it? Is it the best language to learn first among the East Asian languages?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!