When you arrive on campus, Michelle will already have given you an account on csli. You will have an account name and password. The account name is public information. An attempt is made to match this to your real name, but for various stupid reasons, it has to be no more than eight letters long, all lower case, so the match may be less than fully satisfactory. Your password on the other hand is top secret. You will be assigned a password along with your account name, but your first task will be to select a new one. The most acceptable password would have at least two letters, at least one non-letter, and be six to eight characters ( A character is basically anything that you can type in a single keystroke: `a', `A', `2' and `*' are all characters.) long (longer passwords are accepted, but the system ignores characters after the eighth). Some systems will also reject passwords that are equal to your account name or some permutation of it (such as writing it backwards). The best password would be a collection of eight characters containing no discernible patterns. On the other hand, you might find that a random collection of eight characters like d8Jo-4*v is difficult to remember. If you pick a password that you can't remember, you will have no recourse but to write it down. And then you will need to keep that piece of paper in some convenient spot, such as taped to your computer terminal. Obviously that is not very safe either. One way to make a password that is memorable but hard to guess is to base it on some text, preferably an obscure one that you do not go around reciting all the time. Build the password from the first letter of each word, finding a way to work in a non-letter. For example, if you use the obscure poem that begins `There was a young man from Nantucket,' your password might be TwaymfN,. The password is your only line of security, so pick a good one, don't write it down, and don't share it with your dearest friend.