The abil­i­ty to sing is one of the most beau­ti­ful tal­ents in this world and Rhon­da Bobb def­i­nite­ly has that abil­i­ty fig­ured out. The 18-year-old stu­dent of Pleas­antville Sec­ondary School has re­cent­ly won the Miss SAN­FEST ti­tle in the Mis­ter and Miss SAN­FEST Teen Tal­ent Com­pe­ti­tion, which was held on Sun­day 11th No­vem­ber at the Cre­ative Arts Cen­tre, Cir­cu­lar Road San Fer­nan­do.

When gieMAGAZINE asked how she felt, a hum­ble Bobb stat­ed: "I feel hap­py, ex­cit­ed, proud... I al­so feel ac­com­plished. I nev­er thought that I would have won it be­cause there were 17 oth­er ex­treme­ly tal­ent­ed young peo­ple in this com­pe­ti­tion and we ALL had pore rais­ing per­for­mances, but I thank God that I was able to suc­cess­ful­ly rep­re­sent my school and make them (stu­dents and teach­ers) proud.

I'm al­so proud of and must con­grat­u­late Mr. San­fest, Joshua Ramjohn of Na­pari­ma Col­lege." Any­one who has ever heard Bobb's voice would ad­mit that it is tru­ly a gift from God; what's more amaz­ing is that she nev­er had any vo­cal train­ing. When she was asked why she loves singing so much, the Up­per six sci­ence stu­dent replied, "I love to sing be­cause I love en­light­en­ing and en­ter­tain­ing oth­ers. It is al­so a way of ex­press­ing my­self - how­ev­er I feel, I sing a song cor­re­spond­ing with that very emo­tion. I'm al­ways hap­py though, so I al­ways sing hap­py songs."

Bobb en­tered SAN­FEST with the song 'Hal­lelu­jah' by Alexan­dra Burke (orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by Leonard Co­hen). Her prizes in­clud­ed win­ning the Best Tal­ent (fe­male) tro­phy, $500, the Tor­rance Mo­hammed Chal­lenge Tro­phy, $2,500 and an IBC Schol­ar­ship. She had a very long list of peo­ple to thank as well. "First and fore­most I would like to thank God for bless­ing me with the voice that I have, my par­ents and rel­a­tives for push­ing and en­cour­ag­ing me and al­ways re­mind­ing me how proud they are of me, my RHE­MA WORD OF LIFE 'crew' - the youth min­istry in my church that al­ways sup­ports me (I can al­ways ex­pect to hear them scream­ing up a storm when­ev­er I per­form), my friends for al­ways stick­ing by me, en­cour­ag­ing me and sup­port­ing me, my teacher, Mr. Kieron Sargeant, for al­low­ing me to rep­re­sent the school at this event, the mem­bers of my school body for be­liev­ing that I could al­ways achieve great­ness, Miss Shel­la Mur­ray, Mr. Sherid Ma­son, Mrs. Bark­er, Ms. Lucy Reg­is, 'Joey' and Ke­fim for their in­spir­ing and en­cour­ag­ing men­tor­ship be­fore the com­pe­ti­tion and last but not least, my fel­low del­e­gates of the Mis­ter and Miss SAN­FEST Teen Tal­ent 2012 Com­pe­ti­tion, (be­cause of the bond that we had with each oth­er and the fact that we were able to en­cour­age one an­oth­er through­out the com­pe­ti­tion) I have grown to love them soooo much! We even had some re­al­ly cute nick­names for one an­oth­er (lol)."

Bobb ad­mit­ted to gieMAGAZINE that her school's re­sponse to her win was heart warm­ing. "The Mon­day af­ter the com­pe­ti­tion, the teacher who con­duct­ed the morn­ing as­sem­bly an­nounced the good news. I re­ceived many con­grat­u­la­to­ry hugs and words of en­cour­age­ment from class­mates and teach­ers. My Prin­ci­pal and Vice Prin­ci­pal, Mr. Phillip Al­lard and Mrs. Joyce Crichlow re­spec­tive­ly, in­di­cat­ed to me how proud they were of my suc­cess," she beamed.

Rhon­da Bobb has big plans for her fu­ture. She dis­closed: "In the fu­ture I hope to record some of my own songs. I have a few com­po­si­tions al­ready so hope­ful­ly by next year I will have songs on the ra­dio all over the coun­try and by ex­tent, the Caribbean.

But her fu­ture plans do not end here. Bobb al­so plans to pur­sue a ca­reer in Foren­sics. She said, "Foren­sics, es­pe­cial­ly the Pathol­o­gy as­pect of it, has grasped my at­ten­tion since I was about 13 or 14 years old. I was to­tal­ly in­ter­est­ed in tele­vi­sion shows like NCIS, CSI and Law and Or­der. Some peo­ple say it is a lit­tle 'creepy' be­cause I would be around dead peo­ple all the time, but I ac­tu­al­ly think it's re­al­ly cool." she laughed.

So what ad­vice does Bobb have to of­fer to her peers and those want­i­ng to be suc­cess­ful? Posed with this ques­tion, the stu­dent (who is cur­rent­ly do­ing Chem­istry, Bi­ol­o­gy, Math­e­mat­ics and Caribbean Stud­ies), said: "PRI­OR­I­TIZE, PRAY and PER­SE­VERE!

An­oth­er thing that has giv­en me that ex­tra nudge to­ward my suc­cess­ful life is some­thing that Mr. Don La Fou­cade said to me – "Storm is spelled S-T-O-R-M...When you take the 'R' out of storm you get the word MOST. So even though we go through dif­fi­cult times on our road to suc­cess, we must try to make the MOST out of every STORM."