By Julia Barth, Features Editor
Being a biology major on the pre-med track at Canisius is no easy feat: most students will spend hours studying in the library and reading textbooks costing hundreds of dollars just to get by. Most students don’t have the time to sit down week after week and write an article about a restaurant they went to last week. Not Hannah Iqbal, assistant Features editor, who always manages to provide Features readers with insightful reviews on restaurants, activities and places to go to in Buffalo.
Iqbal, originally from Orchard Park, joined The Griffin two years ago when she was a freshman at the college. Features immediately stood out to her since she knew she would be able to write about places she had gone to and restaurants she had tried in Buffalo.
“I didn’t want to write about my hard opinions on anything. I just wanted to write fun things in my free time,” she said. Her first article for the paper was about the Cider Mill located in West Seneca — a very popular attraction amongst Buffalonians during the fall. Since then, she has covered many places in Buffalo, including Coles and Frankie Primos, her personal favorite.
She has since expanded from her usual restaurant review and has even done articles on Delaware Park, popular hikes in Buffalo and the Asian Student Association here on campus.
Iqbal has thoroughly enjoyed her time writing for The Griffin, even if writing has never been her favorite thing. She admitted that in high school she despised assignments and prompts that had a required page length, but it becomes much easier for her when she writes for the paper about things she is interested in and passionate about.
Besides The Griffin, Iqbal is involved in other clubs on campus. She is the vice president of the Minority Association for Pre-Health Students and is also a member of the pre-health club SPHP.
When she is not spending time in labs or on the quiet floor of the library doing homework, she is usually at home with her parents and her grandma, slowly but steadily trying to learn Urdu — her grandma’s native language. Her goal is to become more fluent in understanding and speaking the language so that she can converse with her grandma in Urdu as well as English.
Iqbal knows that she wants to go to medical school in the future and become a physician. She wants to explore the various fields of medicine as she progresses through her education in order to discover which speciality to pursue.
With two years left at Canisius and The Griffin, Iqbal is hopeful that she will be able to write more restaurant reviews to give students some ideas of where to go, but she is also looking to expand her horizons a bit more with what she writes.
“I want to branch out and write about new topics that I haven’t talked about before,” she said.
An essential member of The Griffin’s staff, Iqbal is ready to continue telling stories with her articles and hopefully inspire some people with the pieces she writes.