I agree, Luke that it's about personal preference. I also think it depends a lot on where you are in life. I LOVED resident camp (and still do!) but it's not something I can do at this stage of my life. One of my fellow staff members (also my CIT director!) worked camp until age 35 or so. She eventually stopped and I hear that in part it was because she found that there was a lot more laziness among the other seasonal staff, and perhaps because the age gap. Also, it's lovely to be able to do other things over the summer.
I worked on a very young staff a few years ago where I was closer in age to the directors (at 24 and 28, I believe, while I was 23) than I was to the VAST majority of the staff. Most of them were 18 or 19 and only about 4 were above 21. I've also been more on the "mature and responsible and rule follower/grown-up pleasing" side of life as long as I can remember so it was rough working with such a young staff. With an overnight camp you live and work with them constantly (we also didn't have a lot of time off that we could physically get off the camp property). With a day camp they are just your coworkers and you can leave them to do their thing every evening and you can go do your own thing or hang with your school year friends since you're likely still in that area!
My camp does 1 cookout every week of day camp and some weeks offers an overnight option to the older day campers for 1 night where they go camping out in the woods of camp (not staying in a cabin) so there's still a little possibility for that.
