I have this in my schema: create_table "robots_matches", :force => true do |t| t.integer "robot_id" t.integer "match_id" and I think I want to be able to load a robot and match from within my robots_match model so I can do something like this: robots_match.find(:id).get_robot().Name My attempt in the robots_matches model was this: def get_robot Robot.find(this.id) end I am super new to rails, so feel free to correct my architectural decision here.