INSERT requires SERIAL column?

Hello,

I've got a table with these columns:

user_id SERIAL
CONSTRAINT pk_user_auth_user_id PRIMARY KEY,
email VARCHAR(64) NOT NULL UNIQUE ,
password VARCHAR(16) NOT NULL ,
status SMALLINT NOT NULL DEFAULT 1

But when I tried using the following INSERT statement I got an error about not being able to parse the input.

INSERT INTO user_auth VALUES ('foo(at)example(dot)com', 'password', 1);

psql:../data/user_auth.dat:13: ERROR: pg_atoi: error in "foo(at)example(dot)com": can't parse "foo(at)example(dot)com"

So this indicates that an integer was expected as the first value.

In order to get it to do what I want I had to use this:

INSERT INTO user_auth VALUES (nextval('user_auth_user_id_seq'), 'foo(at)example(dot)com', 'password', 1);

Question:
Is this really necessary or am I missing something?
I thought specifying SERIAL columns is not neccessary in INSERT statements.

Thank you,
Otis

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