We often think about what we would tell our childhood selves if we could go back in time. Perhaps you’d warn yourself to keep those fun concert T-shirts, no matter how much your parents begged you to throw them out. Maybe you’d tell yourself to go easier on yourself when it came to grades, first crushes, or fights with your junior high cliques.
At McCallie School, an all-boys preparatory school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, they flipped the script. Instead, they had sixth-grade boys ask questions of their future selves. And we get to watch it unfold in real time.
‘I got a few questions for you’
In clips making the rounds again on social media (and across many news outlets), we see middle school boys take a seat and speak directly to the camera, as though they’re leaving a human time capsule. Many of them are pretty straight to the point: “Hey, this is your sixth-grade self. I got a few questions for you.”
The younger versions are energetic and eager as they ask burning questions of who they will become in seven years. (Just over half a decade may not seem like a lot to some, but when you’ve only been alive for 12 years, it’s almost half a lifetime.) Questions like: “Is Star Wars still your favorite movie?” “Is your favorite hobby still solving your Rubik’s Cube, just like me?”
A kid named Ward asks himself if his favorite food is still Mexican. Older Ward smiles and answers, leaving no doubt: “Oh, definitely.” He even names a few of his favorite restaurants.
A young man named Will asks his older self if his favorite school subjects have remained the same. “Is it still world history, or is it math and science?” he asks, adorably emphasizing every word like he’s delivering a national news report. Will answers, “Not world history anymore. I’m a science guy now.”
The answers are truly earnest. The way these now mostly 18-year-old young men respond to their younger selves is gentle and sincere. For what it’s worth, Star Wars and The Waterboy remain Nkenge and Canon’s favorite movies, respectively. (Canon even adds, “Classic,” to make it clear he stands by his movie choice.)
‘You’ll end up doing it’
But it isn’t just about movies and school hobbies. The younger boys also want to know what advice their older selves would give them.
Will asks, “What is the biggest life lesson you have learned so far?” Older Will answers: “Try your hardest, no matter what. You’ll feel bad if you didn’t do it. [If] you take enough AP classes, enough hard classes, over the four or five years of high school, you’ll realize what happens when you don’t try hard, so….” He trails off and laughs a bit before adding, “You better do it. You’ll end up doing it.”
When Canon is asked this question, he answers, “Always be kind to others and always love others. Just treat your neighbors as you would yourself.”
Will, who is asked a similar question, echoes that sentiment: “Be kind to everyone every chance you get. You don’t get a chance to take things back or do things differently, so try to do things the best way you can. It’s all you can do.”
Every platform where this has been posted is filled with thousands of likes and comments. On the Sports Illustrated page, one man wrote, “As a dad of three boys, I am not ready for this. Someone please tell time to slow down.”
Another person pointed out how poignant it was when Will told his middle school self, “You’ll end up doing it.”
The inspiration
Upworthy spoke to Brandan Roberts, the director of video and marketing at McCallie School. He said the inspiration came from a cinematic source.
“I was inspired by the movie Boyhood,” he said. “Shortly after watching the movie, I decided to move forward with the project in 2018. It was my second year working at the school, so I really didn’t have many expectations.”
When the boys were in sixth grade, they were just getting to know one another.
“Most of the kids were so young and new to the school that they didn’t think too much about it. Same with me. It was the first month of school. Our school starts in sixth grade, so these were brand new students that I did not know,” Roberts said.
When Roberts was filming the project, he usually knew the kids somewhat, but in this case, everything was new.
“Typically, I know students I’m filming on a project,” he said. “Obviously, in 2018 it was a different world (pre-COVID), and we had no idea the potential for the video as well. When I filmed them again in 2025, several of them had forgotten about the project, and they were excited to see how they looked and sounded seven years ago. Them reacting to themselves on the iPad is all pure organic footage of them seeing themselves for the first time in seven years.”
‘A real human moment’
Roberts said that one boy, in particular, really committed emotionally to the assignment:
“Will Turrell really took the project seriously. I asked him to put himself in the mindset that he was being interviewed by his former self, and he really went there mentally. I was standing about 20 feet away with just the cameras rolling so he could be in the right headspace, and I remember getting chills when he gave his answers.
“He really was looking at his former self and talking to him. It was one of the most powerful moments I’ve ever seen in my filmmaking career. And an amazing experience for him. It really had nothing to do with what I was doing with the camera, lighting, or anything else. It was just a real human moment.”
Roberts said the project was easy in that he merely came up with the questions and edited it together, adding, “Everything else was purely organic to them.”
