Sontag used the paradox of commencement — simultaneously an ending and a beginning — as a model for how graduates should try to live: 'As if you were always graduating, ending, and simultaneously, always beginning.' She argued that liberal arts education was not a luxury but a necessity, intrinsically connected to the very existence of liberty. Her advice to never stop being students was not merely about continuing to read books, but about maintaining a posture of intellectual resistance — staying skeptical, doubtful, and uncomfortable rather than settling into the mental comfort of fixed convictions. She warned that the forces of conformity, anti-intellectualism, and 'triumphant mediocrity' would constantly try to reduce their mental lives, and that only perpetual studenthood could save them.