In Retrospect of Independent Component

Now that independent component is officially over, I've had some time to really think about how effective taking a nutrition class was to my senior project. I felt that the independent component was extremely helpful to my senior project. I was able to take a class that only 3rd year or 4th year students at Cal Poly get to take and get a B in it! My favorite part of the class were the assignments. They were extremely personal which are very rare in a college class. Here are my assignments, an explanation of them and why I liked them.

Assignment 1: Food Intake for 3 days

-For Assignment 1, I had to track my food intake for three days from the amount of water to the amount I exercise. This will be my foundation for the rest of the assignments. The reason I liked this assignment so much was for the fact that you don't realize what you eat until you have to write it down. It was, in a weird way, fun!
Assignment 2: Food Groups and Calories
Assignment 2: Nutrients Report
Assignment 2: Physical Activity Report
-For Assignment 2, I had to input my assignment 1 into choosemyplate.gov. Choosemyplate then creates reports that I had to turn in. The first report (Food Groups and Calories) showed what my target portion for each food group, the average eaten for each food group and my status. For example, 

I am supposed to eat 7 ounces of whole grains. I ate on average 6.5 ounces and my status was okay. This shows what I need to be eating and what I should be eating. The second report (Nutrients Report) showed what my target nutrients should be, average nutrients eaten and my status.  For example, my target calcium intake is 1300 mg. I ate 724 mg so my status is under. This shows what nutrients I am undereating and what I am overeating on. The third report (Physical Activity Report) shows how much I exercised and calculated if that was a healthy amount.
Assignment 3: DRI Report
Assignment 3: Energy Balance
Assignment 3: Intake vs. Goals
-For Assignment 3, I had to also input my assignment into a nutrition tool. This one we used was more academic. It was called Diet Analysis. For the first report (DRI Report) it stated the daily intake for certain fats, vitamins, minerals, etc. and determine if I was having the right intake. For the second report (Energy Balance), it showed how many kCal I consumed, burned, and the net Kcal. It also gave me a daily caloric summary. For the last report (Intake vs. Goals), it showed what my intake was as opposed to what I should be intaking.
Assignment 4: Recommendations and Guidelines
-In this assignment, I had to choose whether or not I met a certain guideline based on my food intake and explain with details why I didn't meet that guideline.
Assignment 5: Nutrition Self Study and Genetic Risks
-In this assignment, I had to fill out my family's history and what my risk of certain diseases are. I also had to discuss how I could reduce my risk for certain diseases based on what I learned in class.

Overall, I felt this independent component was extremely helpful to my senior project. Even though it is nutrition and not pharmacy, it helped me understand how the body is affected when you don't have certain requirements. As pharmacists, you can then prescribe a patient certain supplements when you know what they are missing.