Very First Draft

My first bit of my memoir. It is definitely not polished or complete, but I'd like feedback!

“Annie? Annie? Are you listening?” I jerked out of my reverie and faced my friend Amanda, who apparently had been trying to get my attention.
“I’m sorry,” I replied, shaking my head a little as though I was trying to get rid of a bad dream. “I was distracted.”
The two of us and my other friend, Aiden, were walking together through a cafeteria in Raritan Valley Community College. We were there for a field trip, to learn about the Holocaust and hear survivors speak. Right now, the three of us were on our way to one of the mini-workshops with about thirty other kids. After about an hour and a half, the workshop was supposed to be over and we would head back to the cavernous auditorium for a presentation on Illuminations of Genocide. An artist had created these paintings to show the different genocides throughout the years. After, we would hear another survivor speak, and another student would also present a writing piece.
At the end, before we left, it would be my turn.
A few weeks before this field trip, my classmates and I were presented with the opportunity to create a piece of writing about stopping genocide. It could be an essay or a poem. I was unsure about whether or not I wanted to enter, but then the night before it was due, I managed to whip up a twelve-line poem. I turned it in to my writing teacher and thought I would never hear of it again. It wasn’t as if I expected my entry to win anything, what with it being so last-minute.
Sure enough, I did hear about it again. My measly poem had been chosen as a winner by the board. But, there was a catch – I had to read it at the Illuminations of Genocide exhibition on Tuesday evening, and then again in front of students from at least five different schools two days later.
That was something I was not prepared for. Public speaking – especially a poetry reading kind of public speaking – was something I had little to no experience with. Plus, it was a lot of people. I’m no performer, not a solo one, in any case. I had no clue how I was supposed to stand up at that podium in front of a thousand kids my age – who probably didn’t even care about the poem in the first place – and read my writing to them. It seemed to be an impossible task.