Undergraduate / My stay at Ironwood; Meaningful experience [3]

"my grades were declining, my future was deteriorating, and my care for life was slipping ." Instead, switch the two. "my grades were declining, my care for life was slipping, and my future was deteriorating." That has a lot more strength behind it. If you can, edit the "my care for life was slipping" so it's parallel with the other two. Find a way to say it like "My (blank) was (blank)ing."

I also agree with the previous commenter; you need specific examples of the bad behavior, as well as a situation that happened during your boarding school experience. What exactly was so profound?

"Art is my passion, my outlet, my comfort, my challenger, my reality, my fiction, my therapy, my inspiration, my adventure my language, my form of self-expression, my future, and my life." This is extremely tiresome and unnecessary. Rather than show how important art is to you, it distracts the reader. Choose three, write them in parallel structure like the orginial sentence, and make them count. Expand on the three you choose.

Depending on the word count and how much wiggle room you have, you also might want to insert a little anecdote in the very beginning about why you started on a downwards spiral when you entered high school. Were you nervous? Ostracized? Fell into the wrong crowd? Exposition is key.