m2m 'through' field in django models throwing this error: 'M2M field' object has no attribute '_m2m_reverse_name_cache'

Hey guys I am trying to add a m2m through field to have assistants to my 'Department' model to call like department.assistants.all(), but while doing so, I am getting this error AttributeError: 'ManyToManyField' object has no attribute '_m2m_reverse_name_cache'.

This is my model:

class Department(models.Model):
    id                  = models.BigAutoField(primary_key=True)
    user                = models.OneToOneField(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    assistants          = models.ManyToManyField(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL, through='Assistants', related_name='dep_assistants', 
                            symmetrical=False)

class Assistants(models.Model):
    id                  = models.BigAutoField(primary_key=True)
    department          = models.ForeignKey(Department, related_name='of_department', on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    assistant           = models.ForeignKey(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL, related_name='dt_assistant', 
                            verbose_name="Department Assistant", on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    added               = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

I am pretty new to this concept. Can someone tell me what I did wrong here?

Thanks

from m2m 'through' field in django models throwing this error: 'M2M field' object has no attribute '_m2m_reverse_name_cache'