I hate how difficult it is to explain sentience/consciousness to someone who hasn't ever thought about it before

It's like trying to explain gravity to someone who hasn't ever even experienced the concept of a location before. We just don't have terms to describe it to someone, they have to basically figure it out themself.

Here's my best attempt at explaining it:

Your brain takes input from your environment, and then has an output that is what you do. However, this is significantly different to the way that an and gate or any other type of logic machine would. When an and gate gets an input, it doesn't experience anything, it just gives an output. However, when you get given an input, you experience it, and experience thinking about it. That is consciousness.