Mary Schmich#.22Do one thing every day that scares you..22

Born in Savannah, Georgia, the oldest of eight children, Schmich spent her childhood in Georgia. She attended high school in Phoenix, Arizona, and earned a B.A. from Pomona College.{{cite web| publisher=Chicago Tribune| title=About Mary Schmich| date=July 11, 2001| url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/chi-010625schmichbio-story.html |accessdate=2020-11-22}}

After working in college admissions for three years and spending a year and a half in France, Schmich attended journalism school at Stanford. She has worked as a reporter at the Palo Alto Peninsula Times Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel and since 1985 at the Tribune, where she was a national correspondent based in Atlanta for five years. Her column started in 1992 and was interrupted for a year when she attended Harvard on a Nieman Fellowship for journalists.

From 1985 Schmich was the writer of Brenda Starr, Reporter until its final appearance in January 2011. The long-lived comic strip, set in Chicago, was created by Dale Messick for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate in 1940. Messick continued to the early 1980s; Schmich was the third and final writer, working with the second and third artists.{{cite news |first=Dave |last=Itzkoff |work=The New York Times |title=Stop the Presses: 'Brenda Starr, Reporter' Comic Is Ending |url= https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/stop-the-presses-brenda-starr-reporter-comic-is-ending | accessdate = July 6, 2020 |date=December 9, 2010}}{{cite press release |publisher=Tribune Media Services |title=End of Story for Brenda Starr Comic Strip |date=December 9, 2010 |url= http://www.editorandpublisher.com/Headlines/end-of-story-for-brenda-starr-comic-strip-63424-.aspx |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130122092955/http://www.editorandpublisher.com/Headlines/end-of-story-for-brenda-starr-comic-strip-63424-.aspx |url-status=dead |archive-date=January 22, 2013 |accessdate=December 11, 2010 }}{{cite web| title=Living inside Brenda Starr's head for 25 years| author=Schmich, Mary| date=30 December 2010| publisher=Chicago Tribune| url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-xpm-2010-12-30-ct-live-1230-brenda-staff-schmich-20101230-story.html| accessdate=2020-11-22}}

She has also worked as a professional barrelhouse and ragtime piano player.[http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-maryschmich,0,287864,bio.columnist Mary Schmich: Bio"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130214182212/http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-maryschmich,0,287864,bio.columnist |date=2013-02-14 }}. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved February 14, 2013.

About four times a year for some years, Schmich and fellow Tribune metro columnist Eric Zorn wrote a week of columns that consisted of a back-and-forth exchange of letters.{{citation needed|date=November 2020}} Each December since 1999, Schmich and Zorn have hosted the "Songs of Good Cheer" holiday caroling parties at the Old Town School of Folk Music to raise money for the Tribune Holiday Fund charities. On December 18, 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Schmich and Zorn held a virtual streaming event that was livecast over YouTube.{{cite web|url=https://www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/2020/12-18-2020-songs-of-good-cheer/|title=Songs of Good Cheer | 12/18/2020 | Old Town School of Folk Music|website=www.oldtownschool.org}}{{cite web| publisher=Old Town School of Folk Music| title=Songs of Good Cheer with Mary Schmich and Eric Zorn: A Caroling Party - 20th Edition| date=2018| url=https://www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/2018/songs-of-good-cheer/| accessdate=2020-11-22}}

Schmich won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, recognizing 2011 work with the Tribune, citing "her wide range of down-to-earth columns that reflect the character and capture the culture of her famed city."{{cite news |url=http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-mary-schmich-pulitzer-prize,0,1878119.story |newspaper=Chicago Tribune |title=Tribune's Mary Schmich wins Pulitzer Prize |date=April 16, 2012}}

{{main|Wear Sunscreen}}

Schmich's June 1, 1997, column began with the injunction to wear sunscreen, and continued with discursive advice for living without regret. In her introduction to the column, she described it as the commencement address she would give if she were asked to give one.{{cite news|last1=Schmich|first1=Mary|title=Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young|url=http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-schmich-sunscreen-column-column.html|accessdate=2 January 2016|publisher=Chicago Tribune|date=June 1, 1997}} The column was circulated around the Internet, with an erroneous claim that it was a commencement address by Kurt Vonnegut, usually at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the misattribution became a news item when Vonnegut was contacted by reporters to comment.{{cite news |last1=MacNeill |first1=Kyle |title=How we made: 'I thought it was a speech by Kurt Vonnegut': Baz Luhrmann on making Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) |url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/article/2024/may/06/baz-luhrmann-mary-schmich-everybodys-free-to-wear-sunscreen-kurt-vonnegut-slaughterhouse-five |access-date=12 May 2024 |work=The Guardian}} He told The New York Times, "What she wrote was funny, wise and charming, so I would have been proud had the words been mine."{{Cite news |last=Fisher|first=Ian |title=It's All the Talk of the Internet's Gossip Underground |newspaper=The New York Times |date=August 6, 1997 |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E2D71F3DF935A3575BC0A961958260&sec=technology&spon=&pagewanted=all }}

In 1998, Schmich published the column as a book, Wear Sunscreen. In 1999, Baz Luhrmann released a song called "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" in which this column is read word for word as written by Schmich, who gave permission and receives royalties. This song was a number one hit in several countries.

Schmich's June 1, 1997, column (as well as the Baz Luhrmann song based on it) includes the sentence "Do one thing every day that scares you." The statement was Schmich's original work,{{cite web|url=https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/09/scare/|title=Do One Thing Every Day That Scares You – Quote Investigator|date=9 August 2013 }} but has frequently been misattributed to Eleanor Roosevelt.{{cite web |url=http://www.news.com.au/news/why-you-should-do-something-every-day-that-scares-you/story-fnkab8wt-1226759016230 |title=Why you should do something every day that scares you | News.com.au |website=www.news.com.au |access-date=22 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140612022714/http://www.news.com.au/news/why-you-should-do-something-every-day-that-scares-you/story-fnkab8wt-1226759016230 |archive-date=12 June 2014 |url-status=dead}}{{cite web|url=https://news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-jessica-alba/news-story/15af4ab7f5b48135532946de93c172fc|title=Everything you wanted to know about Jessica Alba|date=October 2, 2015}}{{cite web|url=https://www.inc.com/lolly-daskal/do-one-thing-that-scares-you-every-day.html|title=Do One Thing That Scares You Every Day|first=Lolly|last=Daskal|date=December 4, 2014|website=Inc.com}}{{cite web|url=https://fortune.com/2015/06/16/kathy-bloomgarden-risk-taking/|title=The one way to guarantee failure at work|website=Fortune}}{{cite web|url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eleanor-roosevelt-was-the_b_8074622|title=Eleanor Roosevelt Was The Original Blogger: An Interview With Molly Mogren|date=September 2, 2015|website=HuffPost}}{{cite web|url=https://www.business.com/articles/40-inspiring-quotes-from-trailblazing-women-we-admire/|title=Inspiring Quotes From Trailblazing Women|website=business.com}}{{cite web |url=http://www.business.com/entrepreneurship/women-that-inspire/ |title=Quotes from Inspirational Women - business.com |website=www.business.com |access-date=22 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150730011836/http://www.business.com/entrepreneurship/women-that-inspire/ |archive-date=30 July 2015 |url-status=dead}}{{cite web | url=http://observer.com/2015/05/just-do-it-why-taking-big-risks-can-improve-your-life/ | title=The One Thing We All Avoid Might be the Best Way to Improve Our Lives | website=The New York Observer | date=8 May 2015 }}{{Cite web |url=http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2015/04/14/do-one-thing-every-day-that-scares-you/ |title=Do One Thing Every Day that Scares You | World of Psychology |access-date=2015-12-24 |archive-date=2015-12-25 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151225051256/http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2015/04/14/do-one-thing-every-day-that-scares-you/ |url-status=dead }}{{cite web|url=https://thoughtcatalog.com/julia-secker/2015/04/this-is-why-you-should-do-one-thing-every-day-that-scares-you/|title=This Is Why You Should Do One Thing Every Day That Scares You|date=April 29, 2015}}

• Wear Sunscreen (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1998) {{ISBN|978-0-8362-5528-7}}. 54 pages
• Even the Terrible Things Seem Beautiful to Me Now: the best of Mary Schmich (Chicago: Midway, 2013) {{ISBN|978-1-57284-145-1}}. – 415-page collection of "ten Pulitzer-winning columns along with 154 others"[http://lccn.loc.gov/2013019130 "Even the terrible things seem beautiful to me now : the best of Mary ..."]{{dead link|date=June 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}. Library of Congress Catalog Record. Summary provided by publisher. Retrieved 2013-11-17. Internally the publisher description suggests main title The Best of Mary Schmich.

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{{Reflist |25em |refs=

[http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2012-Commentary "The 2012 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Commentary"]. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 17, 2013. With short biography and reprints of ten works (Chicago Tribune columns February 13 to November 20, 2011).

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• [https://web.archive.org/web/20071016223648/http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-maryschmich,1,4499351.columnist Schmich's column in the Chicago Tribune], now three weekly – archive apparently quite limited before August 2012
• [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-schmich-sunscreen-column,0,4054576.column Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young] – the so-called Wear Sunscreen column
• [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/features/daily/march99/sunscreen0318.htm The Cyber-Saga of the 'Sunscreen' Song]
• [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-990331sunscreensong,0,660337.story From column to song: 'Sunscreen' spreads to Chicago]
• {{LCAuth|nb99101677|Mary Schmich|2|}}
• {{C-SPAN|60371}}

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