With flying colors, I might add. I got the certificate in the mail. It’s like college apps all over again: big envelope means you passed, small envelope means you didn’t. The certificate itself is pretty soft and flimsy, though. I prefer hard paper.
But I digress. The pass mark for N1 was 100/180, if I recall correctly. Pretty low standards, if you ask me. I got 150/180, which is 83%. Not bad at all. The breakdown was 57/60 for grammar, 44/60 for reading and 49/60 for listening. I should have worked on my reading skills some more, I suppose. A pass is a pass though. All that traveling up and down and going back and forth paid off.
The real question though, is “what next?” Now I have my N1 certificate, what now? I don’t have an answer for that. I didn’t take it for any practical reasons. I just wanted to have that qualification “just in case”, and just so I could say I did. For now I have no intention of going to Japan or working for a Japanese company. In any case, any company worth its salt should be more concerned about my actual ability than about any piece of paper I possess. However you never know when that may change. I doubt the certificate will ever make or break any job application or school application I write, but it could sway things in my favor a bit. And it looks good on my resume, which never hurts.
In short, I’m going to pack the certificate away somewhere safe for now. Maybe in the future I’ll have a use for it, maybe I won’t. For now, I’m just happy I have it.
