I’m really curious if I should learn jQuery ajax API or not. Main reason is that, I also am not sure how to go about learning async js. I read that aync await is the modern way, and a prerequisite to that is Promises. But I’m seeing a lot of tutorials using jQuery ajax… so? I have the tendency get too deep in learning stuff that I might not actually need. So, hoping for some experienced advice. TIA! 
You can use it with async/await with jQuery’s $.ajax, works absolutely fine. jQuery’s .ajax function is just a wrapper around the native APIs for making HTTP requests, it still works the same as fetch does for HTTP. And there are a load of other libraries that do the same without the enitre library that comes with jQuery (axios being by far the most popular at the minute). There isn’t a huge need to learn jQuery now, but it isn’t hard, the ajax api is literally one function.