I've been having technical difficulties with my early 2011 13" macbook pro

Question

I bought the computer about a day before I left for college, where I would have no access to an Apple store. From the second day I had it, I noticed that when I try to log on to my user, the screen is completely black. I have to move the mouse around to allow color squares to show up until I can find where to click to log on. Has anyone else had this problem? I have to deal with this every day and I have since taken it into the store but nobody has been able to help me. I did not get an extended warranty or anything because at the time it seemed like this was the only issue and I'm not the most tech-savy person so I didn't know what it was/still dont know if its a symptom of a bigger issue.
-Since then, my computer has started having more and more problems, like when I open the word app, my last ~six (number changes each time) recent documents will pop up. Each time I am done with word I close the document i am working on and Quit word, hoping that it wont happen again, but it does every time.
-Within the last two months, if I do a command-f to find a word on a webpage or document, the document will freeze up. The word that I am searching for will be highlighted but the highlighted word isn't where it actually is on the document, it'll be off to the side or overlapping another. If I try to scroll down, the lines of text will stack on top of each other and a few seconds later the page will freeze. Refreshing the page doesn't work and neither does the back arrow. I have to quit out of that tab and open a new one and then it will work.
-Another problem that I've faced over the last few years is that if I don't touch the computer for more than 5 minutes it will ask "Are you sure you want to shut down?" and have a countdown, and tries (sometimes successfully) to close all of my open applications. I have turned off the screesaver option and don't allow it to go to sleep in an attempt to stop this from happening. It still happens, even if I am watching a movie or listening to music. If I am backing up my computer to my G-drive, it will cancel the backup because of this if I don't stand over it the entire time and make sure this doesnt happen.
-Last year I had a problem where the mouse stopped responding to me all together and would click and open applications without me touching the track pad. I take very good care of my computer, don't allow it near steam or water or heat, back it up often, shut it down when not in use, and never drop it. I got this problem fixed and they had to replace my track pad.
-All of my applications take forever to open, and words often stack on top of eachother just from reading and scrolling.
-Even if the battery is full and I close my laptop, the battery will be empty when I turn it back on if I did not shut it down or put it to sleep.
-As of yesterday, web pages won't load and show me a grey screen, including the apple support page. I had to restart my computer three times for this page to finally load. I am in the process of writing a 15 page research paper, so I have quite a few science journals open and all of them showed me a blue-grey screen until I restarted my computer. After quitting all of the applications including safari, I shut down my computer and waited a few minutes. When I turned it back on all of the web pages re-opened even though I had not clicked the option when it asks.
I read here http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/01/16/owners-of-late-2011-macbook-pros-repor t-critical-gpu-failures-system-crashes that many people have been having problems with the same model, and since I'm not versed in the language of technology I was wondering if anyone can see if there are similarities between my problems and the ones on this article.
I'm on a tight budget and would rather not pay the $20 apple is requesting to fix the broken computer that they sold to me. If anyone has any idea of what I should do, advice is greatly appreciated. I have one more year of school and I would prefer to not have to buy a new laptop, although it isn't looking good for this one. I have some photos/videos of problems I've been having.

Answer 1

You can always take your Mac in and give it a check-up for free. What will cost you is the repairs you select to have preformed. I recommend shutting your Mac down before you go to bed. Problem solved. There is no need for you to keep it running if all applications are quit. Why do you need it on?