First I'll start with vital stats then I'll move on from there.
Name: Gary Clark Alexander
born: Gary Clark Aboulhosn
Birthplace: Kingsport, TN
Birthdate: 29 August 1981
Mother: Anne S. Alexander
Father: Gary Alexander
Sister: Amanda Diane Alexander

Those are my parents full legal names, no kidding. The reason my name is now alexander and not aboulhosn is because no one in east tennessee can say aboulhson, or spell it for that matter. Also aboulhosn is a lebanese name and given certain circumstances in the early 1980's being lebanese in america wasn't the most popular thing to do. Although we've never had any trouble with it. My Father was born in Lebanon, but my mother is from Bristol, VA. So as far as the actual bio goes... I was born, stuff happened. Some more stuff happened then I turned 1, then 2 and so on progressing in the natural order like most humans. At some point I began to play soccer and stuck with that for a long time. Finally 6th grade came around and I started playing trombone which I still play. Middle school was a bad experience which I think is the point. Then came high school. I stopped actually playing soccer and starting playing more musical instruments. Actually the music was somewhat inspired by the fact that I got braces right after 10th grade. That really hurt my trombone playing so I figured I could play something else. What else than guitar? Of course I thought that I could pick up girls by being in an awesome band, but that never happened because my musical styles are not in the genre of pop. I discovered I actually liked music for music and not for women, believe it or not. I started composing classical music by 11th grade and had my heart set on going to college for music composition. My hopes were crushed when I did not get accepted to college for music but was offered scholarships for math, economics, and engineering. I had the greatest math teacher in the entire high school world (Mr. Chandler) for calculus and I really started loving math so I figured going to school to do something mathy couldn't be all bad. Around this time I started coaching little soccer teams for kingsport youth soccer association. This is just a random thought. So I graduate from Dobyns-Bennett high school (class of 1999) armed with the attitude that I'm going to be the best damn whatever I'm going to be.
The college part goes something like this...
Georgia Tech (campus visit)
"I hate this school I'm sure that I'm not going here, but I'm going to go to Carnegie Mellon in pittsburgh."
that falls through now I'm up to orientation
"I think I made the wrong decision."
first semester
"I'm not happy, no one from my high school goes here, I don't like my classes, etc..."
second semester
my debate between being a mechanical engineer and civil/environmental engineer is solved when I switched majors to math and physics.
Now that I look back on it I should have just gone straight with math, but the physics hasn't hurt me any.
second year...
stuff happens (I start actually liking GT)
third year
I started coaching soccer again, this time for Atlanta Youth Soccer Association (best decision I ever made in college).
Fourth year
I coached soccer again, but I had two different teams, each was a boys' team. I had a blast. I also revived (with the help of my roommate known as Mac) soup night! I did alright academically and decided on graduate school. Penn State and Northwestern had a battle to the death in my mind for graduate school, but in the end, Northwestern won.
Now I'm at Northwestern University as you can see having found this webpage. I'm hoping to study operator algebras as before, however that means noncommutative geometry in the context of northwestern. I have now chosen an adisor. His name is Boris Tsygan. If you haven't heard of him that means you've probably never studied NCG. He's a great guy and certainly far too smart for me. I'm in my third year of graduate school and soon I should be advancing into PhD candidacy.




THIS PAGE IS NOT A PUBLICATION OF NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
AND NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY HAS NOT
EDITED OR EXAMINED THE CONTENT.
THE AUTHOR OF THIS PAGE IS SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT.