If you have time, why not change your CaneID password as soon as your grades are submitted? You can wait and be forced to change it, or you can choose to change it earlier, when it is more convenient for you. Your CaneID password gets you into MyUM and many other systems here at UM. Hopefully, by the end of the summer, you will use you CaneID information to get into Blackboard, too.
To change your CaneID password, go to http://www.miami.edu/caneid and select the "Change your CaneID password" link.
Here are some tips to changing a password.
DISCLAIMER: These are MY tips, and may not agree with what others tell you. If they are the boss of you, follow their rules. Otherwise consider mine and then do what you wish.
1. ALWAYS write down a new password BEFORE you change it. Put the new password into your wallet. Leave it there until you have logged in a number of times. I believe the rule of thumb is that it takes 21 times for something to become a habit. So log in and out of MyUM seven times a day for three days and your hand muscles will have learned the new password. Then you should remove the written password and destroy it.
2. There are two ways that I know of to make a "good" password that is almost impossible to guess and very easy for you to remember.
a. Think of a sentence, preferably one that contains numbers. Create your password from the first letter of each word, the numbers, and any punctuation in the sentence. For example, the sentence, "My first child, John, is an Eagle scout." becomes "M1c,J,iaEs." It looks like pure gibberish, but is VERY easy to remember, and a powerful reinforcer that I feel good about. Try it out. For numbers, you can use years, months, dates, any important events, or anything else. But I do encourage you to find something that makes you feel good, not just some meaningless statement. What we think affects what we say, which affects how we act, so think of good things as much as possible.
b. Take a word or phrase and move your hand one space over on the keyboard. For example, "BillVilberg49" becomes "No;;Bo;nrth50" (slid one to the right) or "VukkCukvwef38" (slid one to the left). The first one may not take, if the system does not accept semi-colons in a password. The second one would certainly work.
Either way, I think you can see why you want to write down the password, or at least the thing that you used to generate the password, BEFORE making the change. The hardest time to remember a password is right after changing it, since your muscle memory holds the old password until you have used the new password a lot.
By the way, that is why I recommend changing it AFTER grades are submitted. I wouldn't want you to change it and then have trouble getting back in just a grades are due. If you do change it before grades are submitted, it is even more important that you have it written down and in your wallet in case you need it, in my opinion.
Bill Vilberg
bill.vilberg@miami.edu<mailto:bill.vilberg@miami.edu>
786-250-2255
