Never in a million years did I think I would end up wanting to be a photographer.

When I first came to Iona in 2014, I thought I wanted to be an emergency room doctor. I proudly declared Biology during my freshman orientation and got my schedule packed with Biology and Math courses.

Mind you—math and science were never my strong suit, I’m a history and English type of guy, but I did ace my high school human body course so I thought, this should be a piece of cake, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. By the time it hit October I had to drop the math course—I was failing miserably.

Finals rolled around and I somehow managed to pull a D in Biology and was able to stay in the major. So what would any sane college student who single-handedly murdered their GPA and was on the verge of losing their scholarship in their first semester do? Switch majors right?

Nope, I didn’t learn my lesson. I stayed with Biology to close out my freshman year of college. So, I’m pretty sure you can figure out how that turned out for me. This time around I dropped Biology and finished my freshman year of college with a 2.1 GPA. If I would have dropped one more point, I would have been placed on probation and at risk of losing my scholarship.

So when I dropped my Biology class, I decided I would go back to Journalism, which was my first choice until I took that human body course in senior year of high school. I was the editor-in-chief for both my school’s yearbook and newspaper, so Journalism was an easy choice for me. I love it.

Sophomore year rolled around and I started taking my Mass Communication classes. I was finally doing well and enjoying myself. I decided that I ought to get more involved and went to the first general staff meeting for The Ionian.

After the meeting I approached the current editor-in-chief at the time—Ian Sacks ‘16—about writing for the Sports section, specifically basketball. I thought I would be the big shot basketball writer on campus.

Again, I was wrong. Dead wrong. Ian sort of chuckled and said “Basketball is for the established senior writers, if you want to write about sports for us we need a water polo writer.” Water polo? Seriously? What is water polo? Being from the Bronx I had no idea what water polo was. I kindly declined and asked if there was anything else I could do. Ian then mentioned that they were in need of a photographer, and the rest is history.

My first event was a women’s soccer match vs. St. Peter’s. I fell in love with photography that day. I quickly found myself on the sidelines for almost every sport at Iona. Just four months after I picked up a camera, I got published in the New York Post. A year later it happened again.

I’ve gotten the amazing opportunity to travel with the basketball team to Albany and Pittsburgh. I finally figured out what I want to do with my life. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you Mom, Dad, Elli, Daneysi, Bard, Stanko, Steve, Beyrer, Pat, and everybody else who has always supported me during my four year here at Iona. You’ve all helped a kid from the Bronx fulfill his dreams and find his purpose in life.