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.

[EX Q]: [261, 188, 118, 52, 265, 22, 14, 54, 34, 33, 180, 60, 203, 167, 249, 204, 121, 74, 84, 253], k=5
[EX A]: 52

[EX Q]: [279, 243, 65, 227, 115, 147, 176, 235, 99, 61, 63, 299, 219, 139, 113, 92, 280, 220, 90, 249], k=9
[EX A]: 139

[EX Q]: [160, 171, 147, 167, 154, 223, 297, 69, 168, 152, 96, 224, 24, 263, 283, 31, 162, 87, 111, 12], k=20
[EX A]:
297