Despite all my fears of living alone, once I got used to the thickness of the silence, I found myself filled with an unknown excitement, the prospect of day after day after day of new experiences to discover all by myself, with no conventional restraints and interruptions! 
All my ideas could be explored, any time of day or night, how wonderful!
With a torch and wellies even night-time forages for materials were possible- though the dog became a little anxious about being pulled into the woods in the blackest hour of the night, whimpering and digging his little feet in, not understanding at all that I needed that bit of branch and wouldn't sleep till I had got it.
My third and final year has started with a bit of an explosion, 'Presence and Absence' - my first installation, working entirely on my own in the 'Project Space'...an event I had contemplated with a lot of fear in my first year, but which, actually has been enormously helpful in setting me off in a slightly different direction to that which I had thought I would be following this year. 
Working with the starkness of black and white was just wonderful, an experience I never seem to tire of, my enduring love of that clean contrast and the complete freedom to fill a space, trying to create as much impact as possible.  I've long had a love of illusion in art, and with a wide span between walls I could play to my heart's content, creating layers, lines, forms and holes.
Is absence ever really absence?