This coming weekend, I will roll my wheelchair across the stage at the Shubert Theatre and officially receive my master of arts degree from Emerson College. All of the hard work and late nights from the last eight seasons will, once again, be in the rear view mirror as I am handed my diploma. I will be entering into a new, unknown chapter of my life once more — for better or for worse.

And I’m going to be honest with you all — because I’m never not brutally honest on this page — while a part of me is excited to be graduating and to be done with the never-ending torrent of assignments, a bigger part of me is absolutely terrified not to have the cushion of academia to fall back on anymore. Because, as many of my loyal readers are probably aware, I do not do well with the unknown.

I am a planner. I live on the premise of liking to know what’s coming next in certain areas of my life. Because since I was born, there has always been a degree of my life that is constantly up in the air. For instance, it is always a gamble on any given day whether I will have nursing coverage. While I have always had some nurses who are more reliable than others, they are all human and they sometimes have priorities other than caring for me. And I have made my peace with that because I could very easily drive myself crazy on a daily basis obsessing over things that are out of my control.

Because so much is out of my control, I hyper-fixate on being able to control other aspects of my life — whether I can actually control them or not. So the element of my life that I have been hyper-fixating on the past few weeks is my future career. This is something I’ve touched on in past columns, but not having a definitive idea of what my life is going to look like after my internship ends at the end of May absolutely terrifies me. The anxiety surrounding my unknown future is crippling.

When I graduated with my bachelor’s degrees from UMass Amherst in 2021, the initial excitement of being done faded into gray, and I had a profound mental breakdown. Up to that point, I had spent 18 of my 21 years in a classroom tying my self-worth to the grades that I received on my assignments. In hindsight, it was probably to be expected that I felt like my world came crashing down around me as a menacing little voice chanted, “What are you going to do now?”

That’s because, while I had done well in school, I had graduated with zero job prospects, and in spite of everything I had accomplished, I felt very much like a failure.

So what did I do to cope with this? I acquired several freelance writing jobs and applied to a master’s program in publishing a mere seven months later. Now three years on, as I approach my graduation for said master’s degree, I am again coming to the finish line with no job prospects — in spite of maintaining five industry internships while attending school full time.

It feels like deja vu all over again — and not in a good way. I can feel my mind wanting to slip back into that “I’m a failure” mindset of a few short years ago.

And it’s taking everything in me not to give in and believe it this time. I’ve always been acutely aware of the fact that most employers discriminate against disabled people. In my mind, I’ve always associated being able to get a job with being able to prove people wrong because it would prove that I can be successful.

Sadly, for most of my life, even those closest to me have treated my dreams as “cute” endeavors. Not many people have actively encouraged my dreams, and when you have a lot of people doubting your ability to succeed, those doubts can be all that you hear in your head.

But I have dreamed about going into the book publishing industry since I was in high school. And while my job situation hasn’t changed much in the past three years, another key element has. I now know, for a fact, that I have talent and belong in the industry because my various professors tell me as much.

Still, even though a part of me doesn’t want to participate in the graduation festivities that those closest to me are intent on having, I believe in myself more now, and I know I will get a job in the publishing industry. It’s just a matter of time.

And, if it doesn’t happen, I can always go back to school to get my doctorate.

Gazette columnist Joanna Buoniconti is a freelance writer and editor. She is earning her master’s at Emerson College. She can be reached at columnist@gazettenet.com.