In my teens I became very active in scouting. During almost every vacation and many weekends we went camping, hiking and caving in the Pennines , the Lake District and elsewhere in northern England. As a consequence I developed an interest in geology, botany and other natural sciences, and those interests remain to this day.

In England, at that time, you had to choose your major before you went to college. Geology just seemed a natural choice. I applied to various universities and was accepted at the University of London. Whilst at the University of London, interest in geology was re-enforced by fieldwork in Dorset, South Wales, North Wales, Scotland, and arctic Norway. I worked in some of the most spectacular countryside in the British Isles.

Gaining a working knowledge of subjects outside one's own specialty is very important. So often breakthroughs occur because of insights gained through applications to one field of knowledge or techniques from another field. It is easy to be intimidated by fields outside ones own specialty and use only the techniques of ones own field. It is just people like oneself, who are working in other fields, and one should not be intimidated.

I imagine that one could build a reasonably tolerable community with 100 people. I have experienced isolation for a field season, during which communication was effectively restricted to four people. One yearned for other contacts (and other food). One hundred is large enough that relationships need not become stale, and minor idiosyncrasies would not become major irritations. As to what the mix should be, I have no strong opinions other than the need for diversity. It would be very desirable to have men, women and children in proportions similar to on Earth, and perhaps with age spreads similar to on Earth. I would not like to be in a community in which the adults are all in their twenties and thirties (perhaps because I am in my sixties). Similarly diversity in background and talents would be needed.

Obviously one would need people with talents necessary for survival (engineers, medical personnel, construction workers, farmers, and so forth.), but there would also be a need for people with talents that extend beyond those needed for mere survival, people with musical, artistic and communication talents. I really don't think that one needs ultra-sophisticated artists such as concert pianists but rather folk artists that can entertain informally and encourage participation. Their artistic activities would be secondary to their primary survival roles, just as in villages in medieval Europe or in colonial America. Until modern times, most European communities of 100 or so people lived almost in isolation normally being only occasionally visited by itinerant peddlers or friars. Most people spent their whole life without ever going more than 20 miles from their village, yet I am sure that most people led reasonably satisfying lives. A village on Mars might be somewhat similar, and given time one could imagine indigenous folk art and music developing.