Want to learn linux, scared I'll ruin my laptop.

I just bought a thousand dollar laptop, expensive considering I'm a college student and paid for it using money birthday money I'd saved up over the years. I love the philosophy of Linux, and would love to install it on my laptop. I tried VMs but don't enjoy them, so I installed ubuntu on a usb drive. It works really well and I've loved using it, but every time I switch back to windows, it asks for my bitlocker key. I do have it, but it really makes it a pain to switch from one OS to the other. I was considering a a doal boot, but I read it'll still ask me for the bitlocker key. I was thinking of just yoloing it and installing Ubuntu/Debian on my main drive, and learning from there. But I need to be able to use my laptop for college and it might not be the best idea. If you guys were linux noobs just like me, how would you proceed?