"If I had to name my greatest strength, I guess it would be my humility. Greatest weakness, it's possible that I'm a little too awesome."

So. It's the exam season. A time when the student population rouses itself from its usual inertia, arms itself with pens, paper, laptops and sixpacks of Tesco's own brand energy drinks (aptly named 'Boost' but without the disclaimer warning you that each one drunk is a sleepless night) and declares war on academia in order that they might return the following year or, in the case of third-years, that they might make up for the previous three. Walk into any university library in the nation and you'll find them filled with normal looking students huddled over past papers and revision notes, as opposed to just the usual few who just have an unhealthy interest in the smell of textbooks.

But it's not all about work. Some of it's play. Only during exam time, play is re-branded as 'Procrastination' and suddenly you're supposed to feel guilty about it. Take a glance at Facebook Jimminy fucking Cricket starts chirruping in your ear about deadlines and revision schedules, and before you know it you're beating yourself with a cheese sandwich to atone for your sin. Don't do what I did and get Chrome nanny, or Leachblock, or whatever it is Bill Gates has churned out as a highly inferior alternative. It's meant to help you regulate how much time you spend on sites that distract, but really all it does is become your on-line mother, nagging every time your mind starts to wander. When it first blocked BBC news with a patronising 'Shouldn't you be working?' I was transported home and for a moment wanted to shout, run up to my room and slam the door. I quickly realised that I was already in my room, the door was shut and this electronic surrogate wasn't going to bring me a cup of tea to try to make things better. Fortunately, however, this one could be disabled. Take that mum...

So, it's a stressful, dull and guilt-ridden period of the academic calendar. What do we have to cheer us up at the moment? Well thank God for Barack Obama coming to see us.

Barack Obama. What a man. As a nation, we seldom get all that excited about politics, tending to grumble about what happens when it's too late to do anything about it. We're apathetic, and that's on a good day. Yet when Obama got elected we couldn't have been more ecstatic if the Queen had performed a striptease instead of her traditional Christmas speech! I myself watched excitedly as he was inaugurated, listening intently as he delivered his memorable speech and finding myself genuinely inspired. What is it about this man that gets the international community in fluster like a teenage girl at a 'Twilight' convention?

There's the list of firsts for a start. The first black president of America. The first president not to mention 'Jews', 'Muslims', 'Hindus' or non-believers in his inaugural address. The first president to hold both a passover ceremony and to celebrate Diwali in the White House. The first president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in his first year of office. The first president to fully engage with the modern media, using YouTube for his weekly address and taking live questions via the internet. He's also the first president to have been sung to by Justin Bieber. Poor bastard...

But there's more. The man is a Harvard scholar, he worked for a law firm that specialised in civil rights and community development. He fought to stop the Iraq war, and sponsored various pieces of legislation, one which sought to dismantle weapons of mass destruction, another which made government spending transparent. He became president in the wake of a hideous economic recession, and responded by pouring $787 billion dollars into the American economy to stimulate growth. He introduced healthcare reforms, pulled troops out of Iraq and less than a month ago finally took down Osama Bin Laden in a symbolic blow to Al-Qaeda and international terrorism.

Why do we like him? Because he's a good bloke. A really good bloke.

Now admittedly I have been somewhat effusive. No-one is perfect, not even Morgan Freeman, and he's God. But there is a feeling with Mr Obama that here is a man we can trust, if only because, more than any other politician, he seems genuine, honest, human. Whilst David Cameron slashes public services, whilst Nicolas Sarkozy shouts about democracy and human rights in North Africa whilst humiliating racial minorities in his own country, and whilst Silvio Berlusconi sleeps with anything with legs and an hole somewhere, Barack Obama seems like a man who deserves the faith the world has placed in him. He's a person we can relate to, talking on chat shows and playing table tennis with school kids. Jesus, the man even got David Cameron to high-5! I'm surprised our prime minister didn't orgasm on the spot.

So, in amongst all the dark clouds of exams, essays and assessments, at least we have Obama here as a little ray of sunshine.

Procrastination over.