Complex sentence: She was a strong student academically, but at 17 was expelled for drug use two weeks before graduation--she finished high school in D.C. Moving to New York, she attended The New School in Greenwich Village to study nonfiction writing.
Split into simpler sentences: She was a strong student academically, but at 17 was expelled for drug use two weeks before graduation. She finished high school in D.C. After moving to New York, she attended The New School in Greenwich Village to study nonfiction writing.