I am often asked why the blog I started in March 2005 (close to 20 years ago) was given the name IQ’s Corner. Here is the brief backstory.
I began work as a non-doctoral school psychologist in 1975. I worked for two years in rural Iowa and then learned of a job in St. Cloud, Mn from a friend who graduated from the Moorhead State University (now called Minnesota State University—Moorhead) School Psychology program one year before me.
If memory serves me correctly, the St. Cloud metro area, at the time, was approximately 50k in size. I became only the second on a staff of only two school psychologists. Given what was happening in special education at the time (child find; building programs) and the size of St. Cloud, the two of us SP’s were primarily busy with SPED-related assessments.
Given the schools that were my responsibility, the demand for my testing was typically above that of my colleague. At the end of every school year a report was generated re our activities for that year. A major portion focused on the number of assessments completed. I was typically in the number 1 slot year-after-year. My colleague nicked-named me “IQ McGrew”, and the abbreviated “IQ” just stuck. One typically never creates one’s nickname—nicknames seem to emerge organically from a single person or moment.
One year our director of SPED suggested that the SPED department (which was where we were housed) needed better PR. My colleague and I suggested a SPED newsletter, and my colleague jokingly said “and hey….McGrew can have a special corner in the newsletter….”IQ’s Corner.” It became a long-standing joke, as well as my nickname of “IQ McGrew”.
So…when starting a blog on a whim in 2005, I simply called it IQs Corner…the long-standing plan of me having a column in our SPED newsletter had came to fruition…as a small corner of the web—IQ’s Corner. Now you know the rest of the story.
Fast forward, and within my wives family of three young adult sons, I have now earned the nickname of K-dizzle….and more recently, just “diesel”. I’ll leave the origins a mystery for now. :)
