Joseph D’Antonio

One might think of the song, “The Long and Winding Road,” when listening to first-year PharmD student Joseph D’Antonio talk about the path he has followed to pharmacy school.

A native of Hauppauge in Suffolk County, D’Antonio is on his second career — and life.

“This isn’t my first career path and I’m all about second chances and revitalization.”

D’Antonio earned a bachelor’s degree in automotive management and industrial technology in 2014 from SUNY Farmingdale.

“I worked in the automotive field for about a year and a half, and realized my degree wouldn’t be able to help me be what I thought I could be,” he said. “I knew I needed to make a change.

“So who I am today is the culmination of over eight years’ worth of direction,” D’Antonio said.

D’Antonio decided, with help from his girlfriend, to return to school and “do what I should have done in the beginning,” he said. “Something in the medical field. I always had a knack for math and science, but I just hadn’t believed I could be someone who could do something like this.”

“This” started with earning a Pharmacy Technician Certification Board certification as a pharmacy technician while working at Walgreens and earning a post-baccalaureate certificate in health professions from SUNY Farmingdale.

But, initially, becoming a pharmacist wasn’t his final goal. He simply kept looking for what was right, taking two or three classes a semester at SUNY Farmingdale. Then he applied for a pharmacy assistant opening at Stony Brook Hospital. Three months went by and he was contacted for an interview. “I was scared to death, but it went great and I’ve worked there for the past year and a half, and am now still a per-diem employee there,” D’Antonio said.

While there, D’Antonio saw what institutional pharmacists do firsthand, including things like compounding, clean room and day-to-day responsibilities — “the nitty gritty of it” — and thought, “I can do this and it all clicked,” and he committed to applying to pharmacy school.

He gave himself an ultimatum when he returned to school to get to where he is now. “I went from a C+/B- student to a straight-A student, and I did it as a part-time student while working full time.”

He also thought, “How’s this for karma? I only need two classes [to complete my prerequisites] and both are offered through the United University Professions Union at Stony Brook Hospital and I don’t have to pay for them,” he said. “It was a sign. I had that itch to push myself to be more and this opportunity presented itself at just the right time.”

He’s taken care of the itch, and “this” for him now is attending the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Binghamton University.

To find his home at Binghamton, D’Antonio applied to 10 pharmacy schools, and visited six of them. “After the sixth acceptance, I realized I wanted to go to Binghamton,” he said. “I felt the most at home here, that it was the best place for me. Everyone was so warm and accepting. At other schools, I felt more like a customer buying something, but here everyone was delightful. It all had a major effect on me and I felt comfortable.”

D’Antonio said having been a student at a SUNY school helped in his transition as well. “At Farmingdale, even the color scheme was the same as at Binghamton!” he joked.

“And even though people might say we’re in a rough area here in Johnson City, in my opinion and through my eyes I saw a tremendous opportunity. Along with the investment the state and the University were willing to put in, I saw the diamond in the rough.”

The symbolism hasn’t escaped him either. “I saw my being here as symbolic of the area. The symbolism, color scheme, school — the time is right for me,” he said.

But is it different for him as an older student who took a roundabout path to get to Binghamton?

“I know that I feel differently,” he said, explained that his life experiences have helped him since his return to school. “I’m not affected by that same peer pressure I feel my fellow students are,” he said. “I have no problem being the guy who sits up front and raises his hand first anymore.

“I feel like there’s a bit of a generational gap and some might think having that disconnect would be a detriment, but I feel it’s to my advantage,” he said. “I’m right there, participating, asking questions. I like to think I’m helpful in that respect. I’d like to think that my putting myself out there is to the improvement of my classmates and those directly around me.”

After what D’Antonio terms failures in the past, he’s that much more confident of his abilities now. “I am the person who is here doing the work and making the best decisions I can every day to put myself in the best position, and lately I’ve been proud of my efforts,” he said. “I’m preparing well and confident in myself and what I’ve done lately, and I think my efforts are to the betterment of my peers, family, environment.

“I have to pinch myself. I never would have imagined this for myself 10 years ago!” he said.

D’Antonio has thrown himself into more than his studies — whenever there are exams, he and his roommate have an understanding that they’ll study together — he’s also a student ambassador and is involved in student organizations such as the American Pharmacists Association. His first ambassador experience came recently when the school hosted an open house for about 100 people and he gave building tours and talked to prospective students.

“I want to do well,” he said. “This opportunity means so much to me and I want to make sure I share that, including with prospective students. And I’m trying to make it my job to get as involved as possible to make myself the most marketable pharmacist possible.”

D’Antonio keeps track of his time, balancing what he calls his fixed and non-fixed responsibilities. Most days, he’s up by 7:15 a.m. and in class by 8 a.m. — classes are fixed in his schedule. A non-fixed responsibility might be helping out at a bake sale, or meeting with second graders at a local elementary school.

One thing he does make time for every day is working out.

“It’s another piece of the puzzle for me,” he said. “Being here [at school] is the brain part where I’m challenging myself mentally and professionally. But I have to maintain my health, so I lift weights.”

And the balance is there, including how he feels as an older, and perhaps wiser, person than when he graduated from high school.

“How do I explain this?” he said. “For example, a couple days ago one of my classmates came up to me after a quiz and said, ‘That was tough. How are you feeling?’

“And it’s hard to put into words, but I’m grateful. I’m grateful for the struggle and for the opportunity to be here,” he said. “I’m over the moon just being here. I’m hard of hearing and every professor I have is willing to accommodate me because they genuinely want to. I have not met one professor who has given me that ‘I’m obligated attitude’ that I have gotten from other programs.”

D’Antonio also said that he was born into a loving family that never pressured him and allowed him to make mistakes. For him, that growth period was absolutely instrumental.

“This is who I am now. I’m no longer that person,” he said. “It’s been eight years and if it wasn’t for my family and girlfriend who played a large part in this, I might not be here. I watched her give a valedictorian speech at her master’s graduation [she had a 4.0] and I said, ‘I want to be just like that.’ She also became my hero that day.

“Ultimately, I hope I can be the rock for my family to support them like they’ve supported me all these years, and be the person future generations can look up to,” he said.

So, not surprisingly, once he has his PharmD in hand, D’Antonio has a plan.

“I actually have an inkling having worked in both retail and institutional and it has shown me that I prefer one — institutional,” he said. “A hospital is the way to go for me beyond a doubt. In Dr. Riley’s class, we had four pharmacists come through and one guy was like me. He wears hearing aids and is a clinical pharmacist, which made me very happy to see someone succeed in this career field with my same disability.

“Plus, at Stony Brook Hospital, I know that the hard work I put in every day is appreciated,” he added. “I know that what I do is special work because I’ve been there to train my fellow pharmacy techs and they’re all still there doing great work. I felt I was effective, respected and it’s an environment that I would like to return to, if not at Stony Brook Hospital, at another hospital.”