As a pre-residency clinical fellow, your position in a fellowship program is a sort of work-study in which you take the training and medical education you have thus far received and begin to apply it in actual practice, typically under the supervision of a mentor or licensed professional. These sorts of fellowships can further prepare you for the duties and responsibilities of a residency in a particular health specialty. Because of the limited amount of patient interaction a student can safely and legally perform at this point in their education, many such fellowships focus on research. Fellowships can vary in terms of the time commitments requires, but typically take between one and two years to complete.