That was the case! I was opening the photos with the basic Windows program and once I opened them in Rawttherapee the RAW looked so much better! Thank you so much.
I was using the basic photo program that came with Windows and turns out that was a bad idea. I understand that the RAW photos are mainly used for further processing but I thought they should appear better to begin with and that's what happens when I open them with Rawtherapee. Thanks to your comment I found that program and can now make some adjustments to the RAW to make it look a bit better! Thanks a lot.
I will indeed look into taking more pictures in JPEG and use RAW only for images that I feel like I will process later. For now I'm using Rawtherapee since I'm just starting out but thanks a lot for the info!