Start with aardvark

Today, I set up my UC Davis ID(!), and that marks yet one more step I am closer to being a law student. Yes, very exciting, I know. But the process by which I had to set up my account was two parts hilarious, one part annoying.

I set my ID, and then I needed to set my password. But I was going to need to be a bit craftier in my password creation, in order to adhere to the UC Davis rules for password creation. That, reader, was no easy task. According to the rules, one must:

check must be seven (7) or eight (8) characters long
check must contain at least one uppercase letter
check must contain at least one lowercase letter
check must contain at least one numeral (0 through 9)
check must contain at least one punctuation character
check may not contain any spaces
check may not contain the first three characters of your LoginID, first name, middle name, or last name
check may not contain any doublequote ("), ampersand (&), semicolon (;), singlequote ('), or backquote (')

Somewhat comical, if you ask me. But doable, since I have a few select words that make up my passwords, and I could change them slightly to make it work.

Now, on my first attempt, which I thought would work perfectly, I included a word that I am most certain is not in a dictionary. That word? Sophia, the name of my cat (and don't worry - no passwords I use have this word in them, nor do I ever intend to use that word).

But, once I hit "Continue" at the bottom of the page, UC Davis told me this:

The password you selected appears to contain a dictionary word, which makes it too easy to guess.¹ Please return to the previous page and try a different password.

Needless to say, I was a bit taken aback. I mean, I'm all for security. But I have to make up a word to make a password? That seems a tad overprotective.

I finally ended up finding an acceptable password, but it uses something I don't use often. Hopefully, in its attempt to keep me secure, UC Davis doesn't force me into a password that is so hard, even I have a hard time remembering.

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1. Bolding added for effect