Confused about the IEEE conference publication process as a first-time author

I recently finished my Bachelors degree and Ill be starting my MSc this September. During my final year, I completed my dissertation and it received the highest grade. My supervisor was really impressed with the work and encouraged me to turn it into a paper for publication.

Over the last two months, I've been working on it almost constantly like rewriting the abstract, improving the draft, responding to reviewer comments, and finally submitting the completed paper yesterday. I actually ended up enjoying the research process a lot and it made me realize I'd really like to become a researcher in the future

btw reviewer #2 was pretty harsh... but honestly the feedback was fair and helped improve the paper 😂

im kinda confused here I assumed that if the paper was accepted, it would simply be published in the IEEE conference proceedings and that would be the end of it. but then my supervisor only recently told me that if it's accepted, I would also have to travel to another country and present the paper at the conference.

I genuinely had no idea this was part of the process. Maybe I just didn't read the conference website carefully enoughbut it completely surprised me.

I'm trying to figure out if I can decline to present my paper if it is accepted. I recently noticed there is a journal that I would prefer to submit to, so if I decide not to attend the conference, can I submit the same paper to a different conference or journal? Would I need to withdraw it first?

I'm asking because this is my first ever research paper, so I'm still learning how the whole submission and publication process works. I don't want to make mistakes now that could affect future papers during my MSc orhopefully a PhD.