Do you think that in the modern IT scenerio (also the job requirements currently), it is ok to put more effort into UML at the expense of other methods( or tools, technically speaking )?
My opinion is, learn UML enough to understand all examples in a textbook. After that, refer to the specification/books when you bumb into something new. For the other, not-so-popular techniques, I'd say don't learn them until a need occurs. Mostly you'll understand just fine without having read a book about them.