How would you convince your peers to give up alcohol?

[mayoisms]

Changing a long held and deep seated opinion is extremely difficult at the best of times, even to a receptive audience. Often, the best you can hope for is to give them something to think about, making them aware of the other side and hoping they start to see it your way. But when their opinion is about something that affects them in negative ways

Comments

[cymruangel]

The arguement's good, in itself. But consider people like me, who never have hangovers (ok 1, once, but I was drinking with people twice my height and width) and thus don't feel the negative effects the following day.
Then there's the fact that although we supposedly live in a laddette culture, such episodes are rarer with women (that I may be wrong about, but I've not seen them), if only slightly, so convincing a female student to give up alcohol might be more difficult.

Unless, and this is not a criticism but an honest question, your theory rests on an assumption of gender for the sake of argument?

[mayoisms]

Thank you. :-)

Actually, the argument was never supposed to be watertight, I was usuing it more as a creative excercise in tone and language. The argument itself is quite conciously gender-biased because it makes it simple.

May or may not have explained this, but these are all part of one (yes, one!) job application, so using each essay to sorta explore different styles of writing and thinking. Next up, "my life as a movie."

[djpreece]

Giving up alcohol (or not starting alcohol) has to be something you want. It can't be done out of competitiveness, because invariably you will find ways around "the rules" if you really want to. Look at women and chocolate whilst on a diet, and translate the idea

[mayoisms]

I was going to write a long and reasonably well thought out response to all those, but I don't think I need to. Like I said to Hannah, it's simply a demonstration of a writing style and a thought process. It's not supposed to be watertight, it's not supposed to be an actual, proven, successful instruction booklet on convincing someone to give up alcohol. Like you said, it's impossible unless they want to give it up.

It's also completely tongue in cheek. This company doesn't seem to take itself too seriously, so I'm hoping that this meets with their approval as demonstration as someone who's got a reasonable sense of humour.

Of course, maybe it's just really poorly written and I'm under some sort of self-delusion.

And as always, thank you for the feedback. Incidentally, you've completely put me off ever wanting to not drink. :)

[sa_ra_ra_ra]

Which company is it?

I just get asked silly questions like 'what would you do if you were in charge of (company x)?'

[efields]

I wish I could persuade my friends to stop drinking..! Will update soon about my weekend in Edinburgh, being the only sober one there (as always) was ok until about midnight...then it all went downhill. After seeing what happened to some of those people, I'm so glad I don't drink!

Actually had quite a few people saying they were jealous of me for not drinking so I guess not everyone enjoys it as much as they say they do.