It's honestly going to be difficult to give you a good answer because literally every EMS agency is different. In my area, we have both volunteer and paid EMTs, paid paramedics, paid and volunteer firefighters, paid private ambulance agencies, etc (I am also in a suburban area). In the county next to us, they have a combined fire/rescue station with exclusively volunteer members. The best thing that you can do is to go to the agency in your area and do a ridealong. Those are designed to give you insight into all of the questions that you have here and I think you'll be able to get a better feel for if this is something you really want to do
Working as a first responder is good for a resume, but I don't think it's worth it if you don't genuinely enjoy it.
Another thing - you might want to give yourself some time to get comfortable driving a car before jumping into driving ambulances/fire trucks emergently lol. I'm not sure how relaxed you feel behind the wheel right now, but I know I was definitely a nervous driver when I first got my driver's license and you don't really have time for that when you're trying to fit a fire truck down a narrow road or between two split lanes of traffic.
EMS is definitely a commitment, and not just in regards to the time that you'll spend actually working. I think what you've planned to do now sounds like a good start, but definitely schedule a ridealong to learn more about the agency! I can almost guarantee that if you'll be on a rescue squad near a college, you'll be working with a bunch of pre-med and/or medical students (esp. if it's a volunteer agency) who can probably answer a lot of your questions really well.