Also, if it matters, my minecraft directory isn't default; it's on a flash drive
my computer specs
I don't know what sort of gpu I have (it may be an integrated one, as I am on a laptop), however I do have 8gb of ram, all of which is allocated for Minecraft.
Latest news on this; I went with some of the recommendations above, and went ahead and got the latest java 64 bit, as well as updating my graphics drivers. Additionally, VBOs are on, I changed my render distance from 16 down to 12, and went with fast, rather than fancy, graphics, and am still having issues.