What would people do on Mars?
I imagine the first would be primarily concerned with work to allow more to come - actually physically setting up the colony buildings and systems. You'd also want to be doing exploration and basic science, to learn more about Mars and what resources you can learn to exploit.
It sounds like a terrible dreary life.
Never, in the history of mankind, has the life of a real pioneer been comfortable and easy, Morrus. It would be turning in a comfortable, first-world lifestyle for crowded conditions, little privacy, and not a whole lot of leisure. However, you'd be building a new thing, the start of something the scale of which is difficult to contemplate.
You know the term "mid-life crisis", where, having reached maturity, the person looks back, and wonders, "What, really, have I accomplished with my life? Does what I've done *mean* anything? Will anyone remember me?" The pioneer has no such questions - he or she has carved a new life out of a place where none was available before. At the end of 20 years, say, he or she would look over the colony, and know darned well what they accomplished.
I'm looking at the list of things you get trained for and it seems to me that you could easily apply those on Earth as well if it doesn't go through. Extensive medical training, geology, physiotherapy, psychology, electronics, life support, crop cultivation and communication equipment. The only iffy one seems to be exobiology as I can't imagine there being all that many job offerings for it.
The problem is that you'd have to be "jack of all trades, master of none." For each of those, you're nowhere near the level of competence of a master of that field. Modern society calls for high-performing specialists, while pioneer work calls for broad but low-level competence.
