Shianna says she ended up in counselling because Year 12 was so stressful.

“I’m feeling so much pressure and I’m feeling so much stress, and expectations to do the best I can,” she sobs, in the emotional clip. “And I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I’m not superman.

“I’m at the point where I’m ready to turn around and rebel against it all and say look you can shove your f***ing school up your arse because I don’t want to do any of it.

“Because I’m not going to let four letters and a number on a piece of paper at the end of it all tell me what I can and can’t be.”

Her video diary was part of a year-long project by Princess Pictures in which the production company gave cameras to 14 final-year students across Australia for a self-created “vlogumentary” series. The results, in which young people tell their own story in their own words, are deeply powerful.

“It was definitely one of the lows,” Shianna told news.com.au about her tearful video diary entry. “Everything was coming all at once — relationships, friends, I was dealing with stuff at home. I getting a lot from my teachers about what I should be aiming for, I was over it.”

The Year 12 student says teachers need to stop putting so much pressure on teenagers over what is essentially just a number.Source:ABC

The 17-year-old is waiting for her Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) results this week, among 1.6 million nationwide who have completed final year exams in 2016.

In Victoria, however, more than 2000 students who registered to receive their results via text have already received their results, in a major bungle five days ahead of their scheduled release.

Shianna had always done well at school, but during her final year teachers were warning her not to disappoint them.

Shianna, from Belmore River in NSW, ended up getting counselling, and while she recognises that some students were able to brush off the stress, she feels that for others the intensity of this year was at times unbearable.

She says that pressure was coming from her teachers, rather than her parents. “I understand they’re trying to encourage kids, but making statement like your marks determine your life is putting the pressure on,” she said. “This is my education. I’ve got to figure out what I want to achieve.”

She says she had “mixed emotions” about the importance of her final marks. “They play a part in the next step, going to university, but there are so many options and pathways, it can limit you.

“Going through that, seeing how much it affected me was very worrying. My parents say, ‘I’d never be able to go back to school and do what you are.’

“I understand they didn’t have the technology we had, which made access to resources harder, but the syllabus, they’re always adding more content to differentiate between schools. We’re dealing with more workload and harder content.”

Laura Waters, creator and executive producer of My Year 12 Life, says Australia needs to listen to Shianna and the other teenagers in the show.

“It’s time we talked about the stress we’re putting on teenagers, and the effect of telling them they should be judged by one number, the ATAR,” she said.

“We wanted to hear their stories, told their way. Since teenagers are hilarious, dramatic, and brutally honest, so is our series.”

Shianna says she hopes students who follow her can recognise that “it’s not a number we’re going to look back on” and to remember they have a range of options.

“You don’t always have to live up to the expectations of others.”

My Year 12 Life is a Princess Pictures production for ABC Television, screening on ABC, ABC ME and ABC iView in early 2017, with further clips available on ABC ME’s digital platforms, ABC iView, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram.