In this troper's last year of elementary school, the school district put together a lot of money to build a beautiful, relaxing flower garden for students to sit in and admire, and to preserve butterflies. This troper spent months with his mother raising a butterfly just for this purpose - and mind you, this was this troper's third attempt, as the other two butterflies had apparently been subject to pesticides and never emerged from the chrysalis. However, this one ''did'' survive, and this troper had the honor of releasing it in a special ceremony into the garden, where it looked wonderful. Two years later, this troper, then in middle school, learned that the school had the garden removed to make room for new classrooms as the population of the township expanded.

This Troper once worked with piping plovers, an endangered ground-nesting shorebird. One of his first experiences doing so involved building fences so beachgoers wouldn't disturb a nesting bird. This bird built its nest right at the fence line, meaning we had to expand the fencing. Immediately after we finished, a crow swooped down and ate the nest's single egg.

On a similar note, my younger sister once found an baby rabbit in the yard, apparently abandoned by its parents. After hours of cajoling, my father finally persuaded her to release the bunny, arguing that it would be happier in the wild and also less likely to be eaten by our dog. She set it loose on the lawn, whereupon it began to hop away for maybe five seconds. Then a giant crow swooped down, grabbed it by the head, and flew away, screaming bunny in tow.

Oh my god, that is a legitimate source of NightmareFuel for your little sister.

What kind of horrible mutant bird has what it takes to swoop down and pick up something the size of a rabbit? A Deepcrow?

''Deeeeeeeeep Croooooow!! Deeeeeeeeeeeeeep Croooooowwww!!!''

Well, it was a ''baby'' bunny... besides, wild bunnies are a little smaller than the fat, domesticated kind seen in pet stores

One should not attempt to "rescue" an "abandoned" rabbit. Mommy rabbits "abandon" their babies every day to avoid drawing attention to them. If the baby rabbit smells like human hands when she returns, the mommy may abandon it for real.

May or may not be a myth according to many people, but rabbits feed their children during the night apparently, so while one may SEEM abandoned it's not.

Or worse, ''eat it''. This has happened to baby hamsters (which, by the way, did not belong to me).

Many people pass through decades of studying, even doing College, and end unemployed, or in a job that doesn't have anything to do with what they wanted. Sad, really sad.

I join you in your sorrow.

While we're on the topic of college, this troper was initially considering going to a junior college before transferring to a university. But then he was told that performing well in junior college would mean that universities would only look at his JC performance and not look at his high school performance. So he went to university right away, otherwise there would be no point to doing his best in high school.

Been there, done that, got the BA degree, did little with the subject.

I know a woman who went to university to study Neuro Science...and then changed her mind and went for a degree/job in ''marketing''.

That's what happens when you go to ''college'' (actually a school devoted to one discipline, but Americans use it to mean "university") and study something for the sole purpose of making money off it. That's not an education, that's training. Whether you call it a university or a college, go to get an education and, whatever discipline your degree is in, then use that education to make a living.

This is happening to my cousin. She was originally planning to study theater and become an actress. After her freshman year, she didn't qualify for one of the theater programs. Now that cousin is planning to be a music teacher. Still a related field, but still.

This troper recalls reading about how thousands of dollars were spent to nurse a pair of sea lions back to health following the ''Exxon Valdez'' crash in Alaska some dozen years ago. A great ceremony was held to celebrate the release of the creatures into the wild...and the entire assemblage watched in horror as they were immediately eaten by a pair of killer whales.

Wow, so that one ''PearlsBeforeSwine'' comic was based on a true story? Either that, or mother nature is a real bitch.

This troper voted for a tax that would fund a BART extension to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, a major region of the Bay Area with no BART service. The tax had just enough votes to meet the 2/3 majority vote needed to pass. (Which is ironic, because Prop 8 only needed a 50% vote, but that's a story for another day.) Then it was decided that the extension would terminate in East San Jose, instead of going through downtown and into Santa Clara (his hometown), otherwise the extension would be too costly. Now he's wondering: ''what was the fucking point of (voting for) that tax?!''

This troper had to struggle through a book for summer reading once. This was for a school that had caused her a lot of major problems over the year. Reading it was like wading through waist-deep mud, and she went through a lot of stress to finish on time. Then, after a whole spring and summer of searching, she (read: her parents) finally found a decently-fitting "special" school two days before the year started. Relief? Hell yes. All for nothing? Same. ._.;

This troper tried for YEARS to get into one lone college program, and even with lots of help, never did. She has since given up. She has also tried hard to find a retail job with no success. She finally found a program that places you in retail...for a few months. She will likely not get to keep the job after. She's starting to believe she's not allowed success.

This troper had this happen with a competition held by his Boy Scout troop. It was a classic Pinebox derby (for those who might not know what I'm talking about, it's where you build small wooden cars and race them), except with an addition angle of having a car show; a trophy given to the person who made the best looking one. I put days into perfecting mine; having my dad assist me in decorating it to make it look as good as possible, and even ditching the craft paint for a can of spray paint the same shade of red as his car. Sadly, though, I lost both the race (Lost in the 2nd round) and the car show (Lost to a kid who painted his with plain craft paint. Maybe I was disqualified, but they never told me...nor did they ever say, when announcing the contest, that it was against the rules to use spray paint). I was devastated; I already couldn't handle failure very well (I was like 8 or 9 at the time), but the fact I put so much effort in only to fail made it more agonizing.

This troper feels your pain. When She was 9, her brother's Scout troop invited the sisters of the Scouts to make cars and race them, because there were only about 8 boys. While the others all got their dad to make the cars, she built one with very little help. She got to the race, and did really well. At the end of the night, they told her that her car had won, but they had to give the prize to a boy because it was a 'Scout event', and she was 'only a guest.'

The task of writing the script for last year's final school play fell into my hands. I spent ''weeks'' translating the PurpleProse of the source material into a comprehensible script, all the while racing against time. Everyone's grades depended on the completion of the script... and then we ended up not performing the play. We never saw the scripts again. I ''really'' hope my efforts won't be wasted again this year.

This hoping was AllForNothing.

This Troper feels this way about his entire education prior to college. Eighteen years of mindless drivel that didn't help me at all in the real world, along with a boatload of anger issues, betrayals, and depression. To say that the entire experience was merely completely unhelpful is the politest way I can put it - a more accurate statement would be that being in several car wrecks and spending each recovery time reading would have been much better for my mental and physical health.

Logically I could say there ''is'' a lot of information that ''can'' help you in real life if you look at it the right way. Emotionally I feel similar, wondering whether all my efforts will pay off or go to waste. This weakens my motivation and makes me dwell more on little signs that I could fail, however flimsy 'evidence' they might be. This only increases my anxiety and weakens my motivation even more. It's a nasty cycle.

This troper feels this way about the concept of finding love. All that'll ever come out of it is just getting hurt. I literally spent thousands of dollars on the girl I "loved", and then she broke up with me, and now has told me several times that she wishes I had never been in her life.

I'm not sure if what I'm about to say will make sense, but don't let pain keep you away from love forever. Think of it like this... if you were once happy with the wrong one, how much happier will you be when the one for you finally comes? Everything's gonna be fine, and I know that what I just said were not empty words.

Unless, of course, he never actually finds anyone for him, like millions of others, in which case it really will have been AllForNothing.

This troper is trying not to feel this way about her last place of employment, but sometimes it's really hard. She devoted her life to the place because she cared about it (and her boss) so much. She risked her physical and mental health in her efforts to satisfy the powers that be; she never really got much of a break, since they thought nothing of calling her at home about matters. Nothing was ever good enough. Her boss doted on her but those higher than him had a very different opinion; it was like working for Gru's mother in ''DespicableMe'' -- the best response she could hope for was "Eh." She tried to help restore economic stability, to implement environmentally responsible practices, and to make the place run as smoothly as she could. Her reward was to be given walking papers after five and a half years, after (among other things) being accused of trying to sabotage a department. The fact that she was ''proven innocent of all charges'' didn't change anything either.

All my attempts at finding love and companionship have turned out to be this. I've put time, money, effort, and God knows what else into it... I've changed my looks, my clothes, my personality, and yet despite all the people who claim I'm a nice guy and there's someone out there for me, every woman I ever get interested in blows me off because I'm "not her type" or "not hot enough." I get the feeling that love is AllForNothing for a lot of people.