How to land that SA Position with a GPA problem?

Hello all, I'm a Junior that goes to a Target school not H/Y/P/W (think Columbia, Cornell, Stern, etc). After spending the past 3 or 4 days reading dozens of low GPA threads on WSO and how various people tried to rectify their situations, I noticed one of the commonly proposed solutions was to network extensively.

Just a little background on myself, I was pre-med for the first two years. Admittedly, my heart not really being in Pre-med from the beginning along with a combination of personal family issues, I wasn't able to fully commit myself in my academics, leading to the poor GPA I must deal with today on a daily basis. I've since switched out of pre-med this past fall semester, and I did very well and I'm trying my absolute best to delve into the finance world as much as possible this semester. I'm taking finance, marketing, and accounting classes this semester and I hope to really become knowledgeable in this field. What I feel like I missed out most on the first two years of college though was how to network and I was wondering, what exactly is the process to network with people? It probably sounds like a stupid question but I never really learned how to network extensively and I'm really anxious I'm going to screw everything up. Are there any tips and tricks to the networking process?

As for my low GPA, I got mixed answers in terms of what to do about it on a cover letter/resume. While some people recommended that the low GPA should be addressed in a cover letter and put on a resume since it shows an applicant is willing to learn from his/her mistakes and leaving it off implies the applicant has a lower GPA than what he/she might actually have, others suggested that leaving any GPA lower than a 3.0 is better and in some cases, people have landed interviews. For my case, I have a cGPA of 2.52 and a major GPA of 3.0. Should I leave this off or leave it on and address in in my cover letters?

Finally, given the hypothetical situation that I don't land a SA position, should I settle for an unpaid position just for experience purposes? While I feel like I can raise my cGPA to around a 3.4 by the time I graduate, will the lack of a true meaningful internship experience hurt my chances of landing jobs later on? I understand that my GPA probably will cause me to work at less than desirable firms initially for the first couple of years and work myself up and I am willing to put in the hard work to do it but are there any other ways to salvage my situation? What are my options?

Thanks, and I'm sorry for the long post!