Whenever I hear student complaining about the approach taken by a professor, I advise them to watch Karate Kid 1.
Half of the film is about stupid tasks that a karate professor is making his student do and the student complains that he desperately wanted real lessons to learn fighting. Spoiler alert (but it’s ok the film is 30 years old): Then in a situation of need to defend himself, the student suddenly realises that he’s able to effectively defend himself thanks to the reflex acquired unknowingly during the stupid activities.
Requirement engineering is exactly alike. You can use modern Use Case 2.0 or User Story mapping directly. You can go kanban. And you can also use plain old use cases with painfully detailed test cases. That’s ugly. But keep in mind that although you will not necessarily need it, the ideas behind these practices are still relevant. Moreover these practices might be required in highly regulated industries where software is known to put millions of lives at risk (e.g pharma industry under GMP obligations).