"It wasn't as bad as I was expecting but it wasn't great either."
That pretty much sums up my thoughts too. Although, unlike you, I thought the second episode was better than the first. Half the first episode was Holly Hunter finding new and weird ways to sit in the Captain's chair.
The high school drama will definitely get annoying. I did like that they didn't try to give Jay-Den some kind of rough Klingon pronunciation of his name... Nope, he's just Jayden.
It was certainly better than the Section 31 movie and the later seasons of Discovery.