Independent Component 1 Approval

1.  Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours.

I plan to participate in a research project at the Oak Crest Institute of Science investigating microbial communities in tar.  While the particulars are not crystal clear yet, I will most likely be repeatedly carrying a tar extraction protocol to isolate the DNA of extremophiles present in the tar.      
I will also be taking "Useful Genetics" - course offered by the University of British Columbia through Coursera.  

2.  Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.

The extraction protocol I mentioned above is a multi-day process, so carrying it out multiple time should fill up my time requirement.  If it does not, I plan to join a science club at Cal Poly (BIO SCI, Microbiology Club), use MIT OpenCourseware to study organic chemistry, and attend any talks at CalTech and Cal Poly that relate to my topic.  These efforts will be evidenced by photos, primarily.  
The genetics course should take me about fours hours a week, not including the assignments I will complete in addition to watching the videos.

3.  And explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic in more depth.

I was inspired by this research project to choose microbiology as my topic, actually, as I learned about it during my summer mentorship.  It is a an environmental microbiology project dealing with extremophiles. 
The genetics course will help me understand biology more deeply - in more detail.  It will supplement what I am doing at Oak Crest and help me understand how extremophiles survive the way they do.    

4.  Post a log on the right hand side of your blog near your mentorship log and call it the independent component 1 log.

Done.