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I don't think we should assume that some contexts (e.g., writing to demonstrate knowledge and ability for the teacher as judge/examiner) are any more or less "authentic" as rhetorical contexts than others (e.g., writing to amuse a friend with tales of student life??). Russ, when a student writes to you or, at least, to me as a representative of a university institution whose job is to judge students' abilities to demonstrate knowledge, I think that they are writing to "me"--it may not be a "me" or a job that I relish, but it is still, authentically, me--just as a student writing a classroom essay for the rhetorical purposes that bother you (and, an other, "me") is also authentically "herself" on that occasion, herself as that student (which doesn't mean that she doesn't find other selves preferable to perform). I'm all for questioning the rhetorical contexts/exigencies/motivations which our educational instutitions structure and perpetuate, but precisely for that reason I think we need to acknowledge them as very real--both for ourselves and for our students. We can't just decide to be outside them and, oopla, there we go--we're out of them. For students, as far as I know, the desire to secure good marks by successfully performing a classroom genre is a terribly real motivation, one that so many aspects of the worlds they live in validate above other motivations. Philippa