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My name is Jo Usmar. I am a journalist, writer, an author and an editor and I studied English
Lit at Birmingham.
My degree has helped me because it gave me a foundation in writing and I learnt how to
write. Yes, academically, but you need that I think, as a foundation. You need to have
some academic foundation to your writing and some people find that at school and I found
it at uni. As much as I loved English Lit at school and that's why I did it here, I
really learnt loads more.
I wrote for the student newspaper. I had a breakfast show on the radio. I also wrote
for the BBC whilst I was at uni and I just went up to the radio people, went up to the
newspaper and said 'Can I be involved?' and everyone was so nice and I was so stupid for
being scared. I think you get it in your head that there's this big clique and there isn't.
Everyone is just really nice.
Being a Cosmo columnist, I'd loved the magazine Cosmo for years. I was a big fan of the brand
and I do believe it is a brand and so to be, like, one of the faces of the magazine, as
it were, was a huge deal for me. And in magazine circles, to have, as a freelancer, to have
a column is brilliant, because it's regular income and all of that, but it's also you're
just allowed to talk as yourself and that's very rare and I love that and I totally don't
take it for granted. I think it was such a good opportunity and I'm hugely grateful for
it. Just to be able to ramble along as me was just amazing.
But, the second one is getting my book deal. I've written a series of self-help books,
lifestyle books, called 'This book will'. There's four - 'This book will make you happy,
calm, confident and sleep'. They're based on cognitive behavioural therapy and I've
written them with a clinical psychologist. Our mission is just to make self-help accessible,
non-preachy, non-waffley, just actual practical advice that's hopefully quite funny.
It's through work experience that I've got my first two jobs and it's a great way of
meeting people. It's a brilliant way to stay in people's minds and you will do a hell of
a lot more stuff than you might do on a staff job as work experience because you're the
go-to person. So, yes, you might make bucketloads of tea and open post and you'll be like 'this
is ridiculous', but if you do it with a smile you'll get asked to do the exciting stuff.
Handing in my dissertation and it was about the influence of fairytales on Roald Dahl.
No-one else had done and my tutor at the time was so brilliant and he was really into it
and handing that in, on time - a miracle, and thinking 'yeah, I'm pleased with that'.
That's probably my proudest moment because it was actually work-related. As much fun
as I had, but it was a piece of work that I was like 'this is awesome, this is why I
came to uni to do this, I've chosen my own idea and I love it'.