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.

Input: Consider Input: [209, 36, 151, 99, 21, 91, 38, 230, 289, 204, 33, 254, 278, 115, 137, 24, 76, 174, 118, 126], k=9

Output: 115


Input: Consider Input: [101, 60, 42, 104, 107, 109, 273, 288, 64, 23, 144, 18, 298, 247, 158, 53, 145, 46, 155, 80], k=5

Output: 53


Input: Consider Input: [275, 200, 282, 39, 14, 78, 85, 228, 225, 136, 34, 52, 89, 135, 17, 41, 218, 37, 196, 119], k=17


Output: 225