Do I trade my sbd and power up? What if SBD goes back up again? How much much money would I lose out on?

This is actually a common decision for most investors. Where do you invest and when? What are the projected gains or potential losses? There's no way to protect investors/speculators from their own investment/speculative decisions. Asset prices can rise or fall based on a multitude of factors. That's just part of the game.

Holy shit it would be easier for me to get people started if sbd didnt require its own lecture.

There are certainly some aspects of the Steem blockchain that are presented in a much more complex
and in an essentially unnecessary way. Some of it has to do with the blockchain design, but a lot of it has to do with a general ignorance of currencies/assets/economics in the first place. Even if we were explaining an investment portfolio with assets and cash accounts, most people would be confused and find it difficult to grasp at first. And that's essentially what Steem has to offer: an investment token and a cash/commerce token. One offers investment and the related "investor privileges" and the other offers cash and liquidity. The only problem we have is the pegging issue with the latter and the learning curve for buying/selling/converting the token, which is something that's foreign for nearly all non-crypto enthusiasts anyway. We've all had to learn how these things work, so we shouldn't forget that people who are completely new to crypto are undergoing the same learning process. It isn't something that's exclusive to SBDs.

Basically, if the peg "worked," SBDs are just Dollar equivalents or placeholders. There's not much more explanation needed for it. Other than that, you're explaining the difference between the Dollar equivalent (SBD) and the investment token (STEEM) - a token which requires much more detail, since it can be bought/sold, powered up/down, extends blockchain privileges, and would potentially have much more price volatility.