In the article “Life’s Stories,” Julie Beck indulges in many topics surrounding life and our story. What stood out to me was the cultural stories, what is a life story and how age is an impact on a story. Beck first explains in detail what a life story is and says, “a life story doesn’t just say what happened, it says why it was important, what it means for who the person is, for who they’ll become, and for what happens next.” The way a person tells life stories can really show their personality and attitude towards life.  Beck then talks about the fact that age can effect life stories. Beck agrees with McAdams  that through life, people are actors, agents and then authors. He considers younger children to be actors because they have personality traits. They all have roles to play and they interact with the world they live in, but they don’t have the ablity to have a desired goal yet. This decision making doesn’t come until they are old enough to have goals which is when McAdams considers them to be agents. Then when a person is older they are considered authors because they group ideas about the future with experiences from the past in order to form a narrative. The last topic that Beck mentioned that really stood out to me in the article was that the blueprints that are embedded in culture and children believe is how their life will go however they  are often unrealistic. Beck calls these stories blueprints in which “is your standard ‘go to school, graduate, get a job, get married, have kids.’” However life doesn’t always work out in this “arc of life” that these cultural stories try to embed in peoples minds. “They stigmatize anyone who doesn’t follow the to a T, and provide unrealistic expectations of happiness for those who do.”