Ask HN: Is this UX?

I'm taking a class in user experience at my nearby junior college. And some of it seems really practical; but other parts of it don't. For instance, a few weeks ago we spend a good amount of time creating personas for our target users. And then we created storyboards and scenarios. And so on. In a few weeks, according to the syllabus, we're going to do user research methods I've never heard of: card sort, unfocus group, collage groups, and such. My question is: is my class representative of what the average startup goes through when designing a user experience? It seems to me that most startups don't do most this process.