My Freshmen Year and Exit Zero were two ethnographies that contained the same big concepts such as gender and inequality into their writing, however they differed in the ethical situations the authors had to face and the reflexive perspectives that were included. Exit Zero covered the effect of a steel mill closing had on a neighborhood on the Southeast side of Chicago and the lives of the people that lived there including the author in the years following. My Freshman Year covered the author’s fieldwork and findings in returning to a college, AnyU, as a freshman student instead of the anthropology professor she had been. Between these two ethnographies, I found the approach to the concepts in My Freshman Year to be easier to follow and more…show more content… In Exit Zero, the author was the victim in these ethical situations including how and the reasoning why the steel mill was shut down. The author describes how it happened without warning and was for a short-term profit leaving the workers, including her father depressed and without a way to support their families. Walley also brings up in the later years, how her neighborhood was used as a waste dumpsite which had an impact on her by having cancer at age 20. In My Freshman Year the tables are switched the author is doing the questionable ethical choices. For example, when the author chose to do her fieldwork by participant observant method, she misrepresented herself to her fellow students by not fully revealing who she honestly was and why she was really there, which is a direct violation of the AAA code of ethics. However she admits to the reader that her approach to the fieldwork was ethically questionable, but backs up her choices by describing her need for ambiguity and providing the process she went through with her colleagues to keep it as ethical as possible without forcing her results to be
