Honestly, if you're genuinely interested you should try and research as much as you can. You'll either burn out, or realize you're not cut out but glad because

Honestly, if you're genuinely interested you should try and research as much as you can. You'll either burn out, or realize you're not cut out but glad because you learned stuff which will help you in other areas like general software dev, or realize you are cut out. "Cut out" is really just being able to publish new papers or make new discoveries. Which is hard, because there's a ton of existing literature. But although you probably need some smarts to succeed in academic, motivation and effort can take you very far.