I don't get what some people screwing you over has to do with your studies. Is it bothering you so much that you can't concentrate when you study?

As a general rule of thumb, in group projects, if you want it done right, you have to do the entire thing yourself.

That's what your vague situation sounds like. I remember staying up all night working with my "team" on a group assignment. One guy watched anime the entire time, the other guy was playing Starcraft, and I coded. Then, once I finished it at about 7 a.m. I collapsed and fell asleep. They didn't bother trying to wake me up to go to class (at 8 a.m.). (Yes, it was my own fault for waiting until the night before it was due to get it finished anyways. )

I just don't get it. How is failing anything involving another person, including say, a group project, result in you quitting college?

6 + 3 = Apple Pie

Yes, because he/she/it always comes through

I prayed for world peace for several years when I was a naive kiddie. And prayed for household peace, and I distinctly remember Dad beating Mom to a bloody pulp while I realized that praying to the refrigerator (the direction I happened to be facing) didn't help a bit.

And there it is...

To contrast that, I have always been dropped into the fire. But I've been broken over, and over again. But I've never been destroyed. I've always managed to barely make it through when I surely, statistically, and by all reasoning ability, should have died.

Suffering molds us. It gives us perspective and a desire to change the world. There's nothing in the Bible (assuming you're praying to that God) that says there won't be suffering. In fact, it says there will be more.

My personal thoughts (and feel free to completely ignore them) is that the reason God allows horrible things to happen (like child molesters) is that it motivates us to act. We see something wrong in the world, and we, as a society, react to it in order to improve the situation and ourselves. We're consistently growing in maturity as we see the results of our self-inflicted suffering. We have police, because we're better off with them--it's the best solution we have so far. We have tasers, because they were supposed to make police safer and reduce the situations where they had to use deadly force. Well, it backfired, but it's just one attempt at bettering the world as a whole. These are our ever evolving solutions to the problems we see.

Imagine a crazy idea that heaven is just Earth in the distant future, and we're all helping work toward it. And God won't come to Earth until his children have become mature enough to associate with him. Now, I don't necessarily believe that, but it's an interesting concept nonetheless.

Humanity is a group. So which one of us is doing all the work?

That's a really intriguing concept! I just read the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry. I'm definitely going to read some more. The "Franklin Effect" is pretty interesting.

I have a lot of philosophical ideas I've played around with. That one was basically a thought exercise on relating the common question of "why does God allow suffering?" to the common beliefs of Christianity. To be clear though, I'm making no argument for or against the validity of Christianity. But it makes sense (to me, at least) that there are many uses for pain and suffering as a tool for maturing children.

Another one of my oddball thoughts is: If God uses all bad things for good, why would the Devil even need to exist? The only use I can think of would be to blame our failures-of-humanity on something other than ourselves--a man-made scapegoat. I think of it more as a fight between our physical urges ("Sins of the flesh") and our spiritual/mental needs (Fairness, Acceptance, Happiness, ...). Although, immediately I realize it's a bit more complex than that. All mental urges aren't "good," and all physical ones, "bad." Hmm...

int chance=human_randomization(); // Range from 0...100
if (chance > 95) {
  keep_on_topic();
}
else if (chance > 90) {
  derail_with_something_related();
}
else {
  talk_about_religion();
}

Everything can be turned into a religion discussion.

int chance=human_randomization(); // Range from 0...100
if (chance > 95) {
  keep_on_topic();
}
else if (chance > 90) {
  derail_with_something_related();
}
else {
  talk_about_religion();
}

If the universe were open source, we could fix that.

Does Obama know how to write code?