In this task, you are given a list of integers and an integer k. You need to find the kth smallest element in the input list and return that.

Example Input: [99, 188, 61, 114, 72, 137, 222, 220, 19, 109, 140, 224, 286, 253, 226, 64, 258, 131, 170, 67], k=2
Example Output: 61

Example Input: [18, 299, 42, 255, 77, 40, 162, 199, 228, 168, 23, 212, 268, 283, 25, 217, 208, 247, 43, 92], k=14
Example Output: 217

Example Input: [284, 41, 223, 131, 68, 18, 42, 290, 86, 248, 113, 299, 24, 285, 67, 48, 218, 79, 296, 158], k=7
Example Output:
68