A lot of folks are telling you to start with some C variant. I must disagree. C is a language that can best be described as an accident waiting to happen. You want to start with a language that offers strong data typing - or at least, stronger than C. (And the only thing WEAKER than C in terms of data typing are the various assembler languages.)
I recommend learning BASIC first, then Visual Basic, to get some idea of programming concepts and constructs. A student copy of MS Office would let you play with Visual Basic for Applications, which is actually a useful language in the real world. The U.S. Navy uses VBA in the context of MS Access to do various small database applications.
Part of my suggestion is that I strongly dislike C because of what it DOESN'T do, such as warning you when you are about to make a terrible mistake. By contrast, languages such as Pascal and Ada will stop you in a heartbeat if you are about to create a data mangler. Part of my suggestion is that you can find BASIC compilers fairly cheaply on-line. I.e. availability. Once you have the ideas down, you can branch out to other, more complex languages like C and its family.
A lot of folks giving you answers are telling you that C is a more powerful language. They are confusing complex syntax with power. The truth is that with a few specific exceptions, every programming language is only as powerful as its programmer anyway. (Some aren't even that powerful.) By the standards that some folks are applying here, the most powerful language that you would ever find was called "APL" and it was amazingly powerful, capable of doing tensor calculus operations within its matrix set. It was great - except that nobody uses it that often any more. Why? Too easy to screw up, too complex to be sure that you got it right when trying complex stuff.
I started programming in 1968, and no, that date isn't a typo. I've programmed in FORTRAN II and IV, ALGOL, Pascal, Ada, BASIC, Visual Basic for Applications, PL/1, SQL, and at least four different assembly languages. I've made a living for over 35 years as a professional programmer and before that, 7 years going through school using the computer to help me finish my work. The "Doc" in my name is representative of a PhD and it was EARNED, not gifted.
Don't start with C, Java, or any "concise" language. It is far too easy to get crazy with that stuff. Learn the basics with BASIC, which can do everything you need to do to learn programming concepts. Get that done and THEN worry about other languages.