After earning a Student Seed Innovation Grant (SSIG), Finn Mott ’24, was able to spend the last semester traveling around Europe and writing about the LGBTQ communities he found there. “This Student Seed Innovation Grant gave me the freedom to exist in the world that I have never existed in before and that is so very special,” said Mott. Mott applied for a SSIG to backpack around Europe and explore the LGBTQ communities through the medium of poetry. He was already planning on studying abroad in Denmark, the first country to legalize same sex marriage, but wanted to connect more deeply with both the place and himself. Although the task of writing about such a large community across so many cultures was originally daunting for him, he realized that, as a part of the LGBTQ community himself, all he had to do was tell his own story.  During his travels, he found that Europe was much less politically charged around topics of sexuality and gender. He never interacted with anyone who did not accept him for who he was. Overall, the experience allowed him to learn, grow, and create from both the discomforts and the enchantment of traveling alone. His final product, a collection of poetry called “his salt and her flowers” is going to be published next March by Lethe Press, one of the largest LGBTQ publishing presses.