Poor M&A Experience, how do I exit?

Well, never thought I’d make it “this far” but here I am. 2nd year associate in the M&A group at a D-tier European bank (office is in the U.S. though). Due to the combination of being in a shit group as well as market conditions, my M&A experience is extremely lacking. I have 2 “closes” but candidly I hardly did anything on the deals. I have 2 other deals that made it to LOI that I did a bit more on (led fairly simple model creation, handled Q&A and VDR) but they ultimately died due to tariffs / market conditions.

My undergrad background is very non-target. So now to my question, how the hell do I even begin to exit? I feel as though my paths are limited due to my lack of deal exposure and on top of that the market feels very competitive right now, I’m hardly getting any traction for roles after about 2 months of recruiting / applying.

I view my options as follows:

1) Lateral as an associate to a better brand name and work for 1 year then leave

2) Continue recruiting with a very wide net - I’m already being VERY non-picky, I’d do corp dev, private credit, family office, business development, really anything interesting that fits my hours down a bit but doesn’t cut pay more than ~40%

Would really appreciate any advice. Thanks!