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.

Q: [262, 175, 116, 233, 122, 247, 267, 286, 13, 74, 28, 145, 126, 205, 165, 259, 238, 76, 81, 177], k=9

A: 145
****
Q: [178, 142, 146, 64, 29, 225, 162, 274, 62, 51, 177, 263, 80, 173, 179, 282, 58, 164, 172, 271], k=15

A: 179
****
Q: [98, 237, 179, 245, 268, 231, 97, 238, 174, 137, 153, 63, 168, 289, 50, 62, 57, 159, 81, 255], k=18

A:
255
****