Guanajuato., Gto., December 2, 2015. Five years ago, Maria Fernando de la Torre Robles, student from the Department of Mathematics from the University of Guanajuato, collaborates as trainer for the youth that participate in the Mexican Olympics of Mathematics (OMM), and it represents for her, a way to correspond for everything learned in the contest.

She currently is OMM's delegate in Guanajuato, and is in charge of organizing the state phase of the contest, and together with other tutors, shares with high school students the theoretic and technic tools and "secrets" they use to solve mathematical problems. "Us trainers become accomplices –to a point- of their growth, because we go with them, know them for several months, so we try to guide them in everything we can, even outside the Olympics", she sustained.

She told that her "real" taste for math born when she started participating in contests. "I believed I knew math, because I memorized many formulas and algorithms, until I reached the Olympics and then saw that did not work at all if I did not know how to use it".

The first time she faced a problem in the Olympics was using factorization of a number, "thing you learn in elementary but no idea it was more than a formula to score A's in the grades", she commented.

Her taste for this discipline grew in a high school workshop she took and learned how to apply this science, although when studying the bachelor, she focused in a very abstract part of Math, low dimension topology, and in particular, knot theory.

However, she assured that Math is related with everything. "A mathematician can work in research, teaching, banks, INEGI, programming video games, collaborating in social research, chemistry, physics, biology, economy with mathematical models..."

In Maria Fernanda's opinion, after studying math, you do not think as you used to, the order of the ideas change, you acquire a taste for thinking. "I believe that, going beyond work, is what makes a mathematician special, the condition to recognize any situation as a possible problem to solve, and the capacity to express it in a language different from words. Getting close to math, beyond grades, works and even contests, is a way to become a different person".

Currently, Fernanda de la Torre performs a research stay in Marseille, France with professors from Aix Marseille Université, as part of her thesis.

With the UG student in the front of the delegation, this year the competitors from the state of Guanajuato, obtained historic results in the Mexican Olympics of Mathematics, because all six group members obtained medals. Besides, the delegation of Guanajuato received the "Copa Superación" for the growth they have shown for three consecutive years. Nationally, Guanajuato is in fifth place, the best position ever achieved in almost twenty years.