How do I (3 years out of school) go from "Engineering IT" to mechanical design engineering?

I'm 25, I graduated with my BSME with a math minor in 2023 with two internships I completed beforehand. Both of my internships were sold in the interview as "supporting engineering teams with project and design problems" but ended up being me writing scripts in Visual Basic for internal data optimization and learning nothing that an actual mechanical engineer would do on a daily basis regarding drafting, design, or even coding used in any engineering capacity.

I was fine with this considering that I was an intern and it paid the bills while I was in school, but I couldn't get an engineering job anywhere within that company or outside of it because I was told my skills weren't applicable or even translatable (some engineering job postings now even have warnings that specifically exclude "Engineering IT" experience in their descriptions).

I then did non-engineering part time jobs for a year during the great disembowelment of the entry level engineering job market until finding my current job as a tech support guy for a big defense firm. I explicitly told them in the interview that I am not a coder, I am not an IT guy, and I solely aimed to use this position as leverage to get into a mechanical engineering position. They then sent a job offer 2 hours after the interview (lol) which I took because they were the only ones to even offer a second round interview. I've been working here for over a year now and I could make a whole separate rant about how little this job has actually helped me get anywhere with anything engineering related (despite being a defense firm in the middle of a war).

I get that the entry level job market is hard right now, but seriously? Is there truly no way up for recent graduates without spending another 100 grand on a masters degree? If any recent graduates have made it out of this hole please let me know, I'm dying for any pointers.