Throughout my career, I have never taken networking too seriously because a job path has been laid out clearly before through the academic system from being a student to becoming a tenured professor. In this I always assumed that networking wasn’t so important since it’s the quality of work that should speak for itself and open doors for moving forward. However, in considering an alternate career path it has become much more obvious how important the network is, and how it could have helped me in an academic career (and is doing so now). For academics, it’s important for gaining ideas on funding, publicizing your work (citations!), getting new ideas, and also knowing how to move on from each step to the next. This last point is where I did not realize I needed the most help, as doing research has always come naturally and being a bit different in my approach has led to innovation, but there are certain expectations at each stage of the game that must be met. Taking a bit of time to network and asking the correct questions, can save an invaluable amount of time wasted from not having a network and working hard doing the wrong things. It’s also a meter of success for how relevant your work is, because accomplishing goals of interest to your network is more likely going to benefit the community than something produced in isolation.