ABSTRACT
Each time I journeyed from classroom to congressional district, I crossed two boundaries—one intellectual, one political. The intellectual boundary separated the workaday world of a professor from the workaday world of a politician. It was an imaginary boundary. But it kept me mindful that I had gone from a familiar world to a strange world and that my job there was to do research and report back to my fellow political scientists—most of whom would never go there. The political boundary I crossed was tangible and real. In great detail, it marked off the congressional district—the place to which I would travel to conduct my research. My experiences during this boundary crossing—getting acquainted, fleshing out “the bargain,” and establishing various personal relationships—were always memorable and sometimes critical.
