Just in the last few days it won't go into sleep mode, the fan is always running, and the battery life has become terrible. What have I done wrong?

Have you scanned for malware?

Yep. Clean.

List the last 8 torrents you've downloaded.

What kind of laptop?
How often do you turn it off?

Well as far as melon scratchers go that's a honey doodle.

I don't really download anything nor do I know how to download torrents. I did download this software a few weeks ago.

Also, I rarely if ever turn my laptop off.

Does Windows create restore points for you on a weekly basis? You can try restoring to a point in the past before this problem happened. If it's a software/OS issue that should resolve it. And if it doesn't you can assume your hardware is just fucked at that point.

That might be your first problem...
Most laptops aren't built to be on all the time like a desktop.
Do you always have it on a table or other hard surface? Have you done a defrag or disk clean up recently?

The fan always being on makes me think the fan needs to be cleaned Does it overheat and shut down?

How old is this computer?

Yeah, I actually restored to a week ago or so. No change.

I bought it brand new in July.

Hahaha you're fucked.

There's hope.
Try doing a defrag and shut it down everyday for a few days and see if that helps.

What OS do you have?

Call the manufacturer. Tell them what you told us. They might have you send it back and fix it for free.

Really? So this sounds, like, terminal?

I'm still not convinced this isn't my fault somehow.

Wait a minute, won't go into sleep mode, fan is running all the time, and battery life sucks. Have you gone into control panel and checked all your power management settings?