Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Mary Schmich "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young" was published in the Chicago Tribune as a column on June 1, 1997. In her introduction to the column, she described it as the commencement address she would give if she were asked to give one. The column soon became the subject of an urban legend, in which it was alleged to be an MIT commencement speech given by author Kurt Vonnegut in that same year (in truth, MIT's commencement speaker that year was Kofi Annan).

Despite a follow-up article by Mary Schmich on August 3, 1997, in which she referred to the "lawless swamp of cyberspace" that had made her and Kurt Vonnegut "one", by 1999 the falsely attributed story was widespread. When the column was later turned into a song, Schmich's "wish" came true when the University of Zagreb's Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing started to play the song Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) at every graduation ceremony.

The poem-like piece has drawn frequent comparison to the Max Ehrmann poem Desiderata, which was also the subject of an urban legend misattribution.

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