By Charlize Coviello, ’29

Staff Writer

Community service is an action, performance, or a “hands-on” activity by an individual or group without compensation, whose effort will directly benefit others. Taking part in community service activities are a great way to both connect with and benefit your community.

At Hanover High School, students are required to perform 10 hours of community service per year for a total of 40 hours before graduation. In this way, students remain active in their community for all four years. However, students interested in applying for membership in the National Honor Society are required to have 40 hours by the beginning of junior year. NHS is an organization that highlights academics, leadership, service and character and is a great way for motivated students to give back to their community. Whether students are aiming for NHS or just trying to meet the yearly service requirement, there are many clubs that can help.

One way HHS students can serve their community is by going to Dirty Works, a gardening and sustainability club run by Mrs. Curtis and Mrs. Curley. Dirty Works meets every Thursday after school from 2:30-3:30 in room 110. Students who attend meetings recycle old K cups from staff coffee machines, plant and maintain the courtyard gardens, and make HHS look more beautiful. Every session includes one hour of community service. If you are interested in Dirty Works, contact Mrs. Curtis at kcurtis@hanoverschools.org or just show up!

Another option is to join Lifesavers Club, which holds blood drives to provide the Red Cross and Mass General Hospital with much-needed supplies. The club also holds food, clothing and toiletry drives to benefit community organizations that serve those in need. Volunteering for these events counts as community service. It’s run by Nurse Nee and Mrs. LeVangie, who you can see in the nurse’s office for more information.

The focus of Green Team is to educate the school community about recycling in the classroom and at home. Members meet after school on Wednesdays to empty recycling bins around the school to lessen the trash that we produce. You receive community service every time you help. The club is run by Ms. Byron in Guidance; email kbyron@hanoverschools.org to learn more.

Outreach Club provides opportunities for students to brighten the days of the elderly citizens, veterans, women in shelters, homeless people, and more. This club typically meets on Tuesdays at 7:20 once or twice a month in the library. Some recent things done by this club were bingo nights, Valentines and Easter care packages for the Meals on Wheels program, and math nights at Center and Cedar School. The club is run by Mrs. Parry and Natalie Frank, who you can reach at rparry@hanoverschools.org and nfrank26@hanoverstudents.org.

Tomorrow’s Teachers is a club designed to help students explore a career in education. By providing students with a realistic understanding of teaching, the club encourages students to think seriously about a future career. By joining this club, you can volunteer for opportunities to work with children, along with receiving community service. You can email advisor Mrs. Abban to learn more at dabban@hanoverschools.org.

The Eco Club is a group that enhances students’ knowledge on climate change, sustainability and environmental issues. The club focuses on environmental causes important to members, works to spread awareness in our school, hosts fundraisers and helps at local beach and town cleanups. Contact Mr. Patch for more info at mpatch@hanoverschools.org.

Be Better Movement helps promote a positive and inclusive school environment for all students. It meets every other Friday morning and performs occasional community service like greeting students at the other schools and holding special events. It is run by Mrs. Byron, who can be reached at kbyron@hanoverschools.org.

Animal Care Club meets one Thursday a month after school in room 305 to plan animal fundraisers and volunteer opportunities. This month, the club is running a holiday pet drive for Buddy and Friends in Pembroke. They will have more volunteer opportunities in the new year. If you want to join, email advisor Mrs. Hughes at ahughes@hanoverschools.org or student advisor Audrey Martin at amartin27@hanoverstudents.org.

Finally, Mrs. Foster in the main office sometimes has info on community service possibilities. Check in with her and remember to always listen to announcements in the mornings as well about new community service opportunities!

Be sure to check out my next article on why hair gets more prone to be affected by static in the winter time!

By Emma Hersey, ’29

Staff Writer

What are cognitive biases? Cognitive biases are mental shortcuts that lead to systematic errors, affecting or counteracting your inner rationale. Your brain can be overloaded with information, and to process that information faster, these shortcuts are used to come up with a quick response to what is being said. This can create misinterpretation or inaccurate conclusions and lead to flawed judgment, poor decision-making, and distorted perceptions of reality. The creators of the idea of cognitive biases are Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, who brought this idea to light in the 1970s. They also introduced the concept of heuristics, which induce immediate judgment that guides you to make irrational decisions.

The inability to make a good judgment on a subject is induced by fatigue, stress, and emotions, which are personal factors, but are also caused by cognitive biases. Cognitive biases play a part in flawed judgment because they cause the brain to process information too quickly. With the quick processing of information comes the capability to miss or overlook important factors that can affect your argument. For example, if you see a news article that several people have died from a plane crash, and it makes you not want to fly, you are exhibiting the availability heuristic. You take what you have just seen or learned, over weigh the probability of it happening, and let it generate fear, even though fewer planes crash, than those that do. The availability of information on plane crashes is, at the moment, more prevalent than information available on planes that have successful trips, causing you to believe crashes are more common than they are.

Anchoring is also one of the biases that can affect your judgment because it uses the first piece of information that you collect on someone, and refuses to acknowledge any change that occurs. If you are at a restaurant, for example, and see a $90 steak and then further down on the menu you see a $50 steak, you will rationalize the price of the $50 steak. In your mind, you will think that you are getting a cheap steak, when in reality, $50 for a steak is not cheap.

People make decisions every day, whether they are good or bad. “Should I eat pizza or burgers tonight?” is a decision that doesn’t have any consequences. But deciding not to do something after someone asks you to, does. That kind of decision, when you prefer to do the opposite of what someone is trying to make you do is called reactance. This tricks the brain into thinking there is a loss of freedom or a forced action. This gives you a sense of need to rebel against the enforcer to regain your control over what you do, causing you to not do what is asked of you, resulting in punishment. For instance, if your parents tell you to put on a jacket when it is cold outside, it may make you not want to wear one because you are being forced to instead of making the choice on your own. Especially if it really is cold outside, you will refuse to admit that they were right about wearing a jacket.

These mental shortcuts make your mind susceptible to receiving and believing distorted information, causing you to make decisions that aren’t always beneficial. The sunk cost fallacy is another effect of cognitive biases because it makes you irrationally cling to things that have already cost you something. If you have run a business for many years that is now going bankrupt, for example, you will not want to sell it because you have put so much money, time, and effort into it. This bias highlights the desire to hold onto something that you have put time and effort into, even though it is no longer relevant or beneficial.

A distorted perception of reality is when someone’s view or interpretation of the world is skewed, which is exhibited by irrational thought patterns. The biases associated with this are declinism and the self-serving bias. They both touch on how things can easily affect our perception and judgment to make room for misinterpretation of things happening in the world. If you believe that earning a good score on your test is due to studying hard, for example, but when you fail, it is because the teacher put hard questions on the test, then you are a victim of the self-serving bias. The self-serving bias is when you believe that your failures are due to external factors, yet you’re personally responsible for your success. This skews the perception of reality and romanticizes your past accomplishments, thus making you less accountable for your mistakes. It makes you unable to take criticism because you believe that it will not be beneficial to you, and your mistakes are not your own. Judging others comes easy when you don’t know the circumstances, but you give yourself leeway because you know what is going on and your thought process. This creates overconfident people who believe they are always right and are never wrong because their mistakes are not their fault.

People who are stuck in the past, always hoping that life will go back to how it was in the past, are subject to declinism. Declinism is when you remember the past as better than it was, and expect the future to be worse than evidence suggests it will be. But in reality, the past isn’t as good as you remember; it is just your mind believing that because you don’t want to experience life in the world you live in now. We believe the past to be better than reality because we are handpicking the good memories to remember, and blocking out the bad ones. The reason reality is not favored is that we are now living through the good and the bad events happening at the same time. Being stuck in the past will change how you view the present world because you will be resistant to change, and want to continue to see the past world through “rose colored glasses.” 

Cognitive biases are the root of systematic errors in thinking that are illustrated through flawed judgment, poor decision-making, and the distortion of the perception of reality. There are so many biases that highlight the errors of the thought process that the human mind uses to formulate a conclusion. Being aware of cognitive biases is beneficial because it will help you make better life choices as well as educate you on how to form rational judgments. But even with this knowledge, you may still make mistakes and struggle with judgment. Also, knowing the cognitive biases isn’t the most important part; being able to see and apply them to your life is what really matters. If you are not aware of your own actions and problems, then there is no way that you can reflect and fix them.

There are many more cognitive biases that I didn’t mention in this article. If you want to know more, go to https://yourbias.is/ And if you like this article, then make sure to read my next one on the Danger of Logical Fallacies next month!

By Avery Bridson, ’27

News Editor 

Gen Z is considered by many to be the first to grow up on social media. Born from the mid-90s to early 2010s, this generation consumes more content each day than any other. When the government of Nepal tried to ban 26 major social media platforms, the young adults of the country did not sit by quietly. They took to the streets to protest what they called censorship and authoritarian rule.

The government of Nepal made the decision to ban the social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, in September. The ban was implemented after the app owners refused to comply with the request to register with the Nepali government and limit information.  Officials argued that the move was about ‘sovereignty and regulation,’ not censorship, but the citizens thought differently. They felt that their democracy and freedom of expression were just temporary privileges. This led to protesters peacefully gathering to argue against the government’s decision. However, it quickly escalated to violence and destruction.  

On September 8, police shot at the protesters near the Parliament building, causing at least 19 deaths, including a 12-year-old child, and over 100 injuries. The next day, thousands of young protesters stormed the parliament building. They destroyed the interior, ransacking valuables and setting rooms on fire. The prime minister’s house was also set on fire, leading to his resignation. The power vacuum was filled by Sushila Karki, Nepal’s first female prime minister, who holds a zero-tolerance policy on government corruption and political censorship. The social media ban and national curfew were lifted shortly after, with Karki pledging to end corruption and respond to the demands of the people.

This issue is not unique to developing countries like Nepal. Recently in Mexico, thousands of members of Gen Z organized through social media in massive protests against crime and corruption. Similar protests have occurred in the past two years from Bangladesh and Kenya to Italy and Peru. For students anywhere, this story demonstrates how youth activism online can translate into political change for the better.

By The Hawk staff

The Patriot Ledger is asking readers to vote for the best school marching band on the South Shore. HHS knows there’s no contest; the Pride of Hanover Band tops them all! Show your support by voting in the free poll. Vote as often as you like before the poll closes at noon Wednesday, Nov. 26.

By The Hawk Staff

Spirit Week brought the school to life with a packed lineup of themed days and Homecoming events Oct. 20-25. Monday kicked things off with red, white, and blue outfits, followed by a tropical Tuesday and a “We Wear Pink” Wednesday. Thursday, students showed up in jerseys and jammies. Friday wrapped up the week with class colors, a pod decorating contest won by the “Freshman Fishtank,” and an energetic pep rally highlighted by sibling musical chairs won by the Collins’ brothers. The night continued with Senior Night for football, cheer, and band, capped off with a 42-21 football win over Quincy. The celebration ended on Saturday with the Homecoming Dance and the crowning of Brad Peterson and Morgan Curtis as king and queen.

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On Wednesday, May 21, the Hanover High School community came together for the announcement of annual scholarships for the graduating class. Congratulations to all the recipients!