I'm old(ish), have worked professionally with C, and I think I have to disagree with you. Certainly, learn some C; it's the language on which all of our platforms are currently built.

But, building new things in C? Nah. I don't see any reason for that. Since C was designed, we've ("we" as in our industry, not specifically me and you) learned a lot and our systems have grown massively in all dimensions. It would be optimistic to assume we don't need different tools 40+ years on.