Sugarman’s activity asks you to map out (draw) your lifeline so that you can identify the

peaks (highs) and troughs (lows) that you have experienced over your life. This visual 

representation helps you to take note of the significant moments in your life. Do not include 

graph in your paper. It is only for you to reflect on the following prompts:

• What is its general shape? Does it continue to rise throughout life?

• Does it depict peaks and troughs around some arbitrary mean? Alternatively, is there a 

plateau and subsequent fall in the level of the curve? Is it punctuated with major or 

only relatively minor peaks and troughs?

• The horizontal axis represents time; but how about the vertical axis—what Life-span 

development dimension does that reflect?

• What (or who) triggered the peaks and troughs in the graph? Why did they occur at 

the time that they did?

• What might have been done (or was done) to make the peaks higher and the troughs 

shallower?

• How might the incidence and height of the peaks be increased in the future? And the 

incidence and depth of the troughs decreased?

• What positive results emerged from the troughs and what were the negative 

consequences of the peaks?

Once you have spent time considering the shape and reflections prompts, write your 

reflective paper based on what you learned from the article and by completing the activity. 

Do not format your paper in a question-and-answer approach (solely answering the 

prompts). Instead, your paper should be written as a reflective paper based on the insight 

from the article and experience of mapping out your lifeline acknowledging your peaks and 

troughs.

Follow APA writing standards and formatting guidelines which includes a title and 

reference page (these two pages do not count toward your required page count). Your 

reference page should include the Sugarman article since you will likely cite this source 

within your paper. Minimum length 3-FULL pages double-spaced with 12-point Times New 

Roman font with 1-inch margins.