User:ENGL2890/sandbox

''This article is about the Cornell Student. For the country music singer and person who ruined his life, see Tim McGraw.''

Timothy Andrew McGraw (born April 7, 1993) is an American student, known for his recognizable name, procrastination, campus involvement, and inability to commit. An Industrial and Labor Relations student at Cornell University, McGraw became tangentially involved in a variety of clubs at Cornell and spent his junior year working for the International Labour Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Growing up in a politically active family, McGraw became interested in politics by watching the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and has worked for political campaigns and advocacy groups. In April 2016, he was briefly taken into police custody following his forcible ejection from a Donald Trump rally in Buffalo, escaping arrest when the police were called away to deal with increasingly rowdy protestors. Today, McGraw is best known for his interests in music, politics , movies , 1890s British public health policy , poker , and Catholicism. He has appeared on CBS 6, Cornell Radio, and BuzzFeed.

Early Life and Education
Timothy Andrew McGraw was born on April 7, 1993, in Fairfax, Virginia the son of Margaret “Peggy” McGraw (née Hannafin; born November 1963) and Thomas McGraw (born September 1960), a businessman. He is the youngest of three children. His parents had an ugly divorce when he was in high school that he does not like to talk about. He is of mostly Irish ancestry, with deep roots to Virginia on his father’s side that he never explored too deeply due to his family’s almost certain association with slavery and the Confederacy.

McGraw moved to the Richmond, Virginia area when he was two years old, living first in suburban Henrico Country, then in rural Chesterfield County, and finally in urban Richmond. He attended River Road Baptist preschool and St. Michael’s Episcopal school for kindergarten and first grade. McGraw left St. Michael’s when his first grade teacher wanted him to repeat first grade because of his illegible handwriting and inability to properly hold a pencil. McGraw attended the private Collegiate School from second grade until matriculating to Cornell University in the fall of 2012.

Collegiate School
At Collegiate, McGraw won the 4th grade geography bee and was a finalist in the 5th grade spelling bee, purposefully misspelling mosquito so as not to have to spend more time with the disliked Ms. Anderson to practice for the citywide competition. He was the top student in his Lower School class and his poem was read at the graduation ceremony. In Middle School he realized the joys of instant gratification and stopped doing homework, troubling his parents who believed he had developed a severe learning disability. He was an unremarkable middle school student and unremarkable soccer goalkeeper. He had his first cigarette in 6th grade and first kiss in 8th grade.

McGraw was much more successful in Upper School, though he still neglected homework and thought studying lame. He won the school’s English and History awards, though he struggled with math and Spanish. He was co-president of the school’s Model United Nations Club, treasury, and quizbowl team (always co-president with valedictorian and friend Matthew Disler). His quizbowl team participated on CBS 6's Battle of the Brains, a Saturday morning television show, losing in the semifinals two years a row. He was on the JV soccer team and varsity track and cross-country teams. Despite his involvement and close friendship with many teachers, his grades were middling and he did not make class cum laude (top 20%), disappointing his parents. He had two sort-of girlfriends, Jill and Carter. His senior year, he was sent to the principle’s office for covering every poster in the Spanish classroom with a picture of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. He was briefly detained by the school’s night security guard for removing a speed bump from the parking lot, but ran away before he could be identified. He was involved in the Boy Scouts and attained the rank of Eagle Scout, though he did not enjoy it for the final three years of his involvement.

Time at Cornell University
McGraw matriculated to Cornell University in the fall of 2012. He chose Cornell over the University of Chicago due to the latter's miserable reputation for student life. He was waitlisted at his first choice, Williams College.  He was strongly encouraged by his father to apply to and attend his alma mater, the United States Naval Academy. Fearing acceptance and not wanting to commit the next decade of his life to the Navy, McGraw secretly withdrew his application after submission, a process that culminated in a long phone call with disappointed Congressman Eric Cantor, who had written his nomination.

McGraw studied Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) at Cornell because its broad, weird, undefined contours allowed him to do what he wanted without explicitly committing to a subject. He strongly considered switching to the College of Arts and Sciences, but never got around to it. He has minors in history, economics, and law and society. He is writing a thesis on the ways in which debates over public health in late 19th century Britain reflect political theories of middle class conservatism.

At Cornell, McGraw is a DJ at Cornell radio, holding the coveted 12:00-1:30 am shift on Thursday nights. He has interviewed bands for Cornell radio, once getting high with the Wombats before a concert in Rochester. He is tangentially involved in the Cornell Outing club, contributes to the Cornell Daily Sun, and is a member of Kappa Alpha Pi pre-law fraternity. He did not rush a Greek fraternity. He has been involved in intramural sports nearly every semester and has never won, coming closest when his water polo team made the championship, only to lose to the varsity swim team’s intramural team 22-3.

His grades are okay.

McGraw is a dedicated poker player, frequently going to tournaments and cash games at Turning stone Resort and Casino. McGraw placed 4th in a tournament his senior year, winning $600. He has made over $4000 during his senior year, starting from a $150 bankroll. He once lost $1200 in a single hand, losing with a pair of kings (ace kicker) to a set of jacks, thanks to a goddamn jack on the river. McGraw threw up after that loss.

Activism at Cornell
McGraw has been involved with progressive activism on campus, holding positions in the Cornell Organization for Labor Action (COLA) and the Cornell Independent Students Union (CISU). He is the only non-Marxist on the board of CISU and is confident that his association with it will haunt him if he ever applies for security clearance. His sophomore year, he co-led a successful campaign to preserve freshman bus passes. His junior year, he attempted to do the same with a health care fee, but this effort failed. He has also been involved in local activism against prison expansion and worked closely with a legal team on a public campaign for a wrongfully terminated employee of a local Dunkin' Donuts. The campus appetite for activism did not persist into his senior year due to the new Garret administration, the sudden and tragic end of that administration, and the channeling of energy into the Sanders campaign.

In April of 2016, McGraw and another student went to a Donald Trump rally in Buffalo, New York. When Donald Trump came on both students unfurled cloth banners denouncing Trump that they had hidden in their pants while Trump supporters chanted and spat on them. Donald Trump stared at McGraw from the stage, telling security to “get him out.” He was then escorted out by security who took him to a holding room with the Buffalo police, however was released outside the convention center when the police had to respond to the raucous protests outside.

Law School
Eventually. Probably.

It seems like a natural progression, and its not like McGraw really has his heart set on anything else. We'll see.

Work
McGraw began his professional career at the Southampton Pool snack bar where he was paid below minimum wage, under the table. He worked at a hot dog stand for the minor league Richmond Flying Squirrels. He took this job thinking he would distribute peanuts in the crowd, but actually had to work the deep fryer, which was really really really gross. He quit after one week and never got paid.

McGraw worked on the Senate campaign of Tim Kaine. Following his freshman year at Cornell, he worked at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. There, he realized how frustrating the American political process can be and became unsure of his career ambitions. Following his sophomore year, McGraw worked in an office embedded under the Triborough bridge for the MTA union. After this job, McGraw ceased his interest in ever working for the union movement. In the summer following his junior year, McGraw worked for a boutique campaign consulting firm in DC writing emails, newsletters, and speeches on behalf of Democratic congressional candidates. That job paid the best, but was quite dull.

During his junior year at Cornell, McGraw worked at the ILO in Geneva, Switzerland through an ILR co-op program. He worked in the Forced Labor division, dealing with issues of slavery and human trafficking. The work was difficult, as much of it was in French, which he cannot speak at all, but it was interesting and rewarding McGraw did not like Geneva, despite its beauty, due to how enormously expensive it is. He did have the opportunity to travel to London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, Venice, Florence, and Zurich. That was cool.

McGraw has worked on several on-campus jobs including serving coffee at the Carol Tatkon center and doing research with professors. The research was much better.

Discography

 * "I Think I Can, I Think I Can" -  solo from the kindergarten production of The Little Engine That Could, in which McGraw was the Little Engine.
 * The ability to hold a basic, unsophisticated tune on the banjo.

Personal Life
McGraw is unmarried, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. His longest relationship was nine months. His shortest was one night.

McGraw is notable for his inability to commit to relationships. He enjoys going on dates, especially to the movies. This confuses and confounds his friends and dates alike. After several weeks of dating, McGraw has been known to become very uncomfortable with the prospect of both continuing the relationship and ending it. This has created tension in his personal life.

McGraw has two sisters, Megan (1987) and Emily (1990). Megan works for Amazon, lives in London with her fiance, a very nice Canadian man who's always touching her. Emily works for a charter school network in New York City, and has many boyfriends.

His mother still lives in Richmond. McGraw has a cordial relationship with his mother. His father lives in Fargo, North Dakota. McGraw has a poor relationship with his father.

He currently resides in Ithaca, New York.

Legacy
Legacy typically connotes death, which McGraw hopes is many, many decades away.

He has not contributed in anyway to the American music or film industry, aside from an unfinished surreal high school short film. His exceedingly small contributions to American literature are largely as a pioneer of the English 2890 Wikipedia biography, a form with many shortcomings that makes one boil down their life into a basic template that, in the process of doing so, will make them uncomfortably contemplative about the entirety of their experiences.

McGraw does not know what he wants to do with his life, nor what legacy he would like to leave. He loves learning and school, but strongly dislikes grades and rigidity. He values his friends, and hopes they value him. He believes, perhaps vainly, that he single-handedly kept his family together during a disastrous divorce. He's not sure if that was the right thing to do.

He liked the in-class one-on-one he did on James Baldwin's "Autobiographical Notes".

McGraw wants to be an honest man and a good writer.