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: [11, 278, 43, 255, 83, 18, 268, 283, 288, 222, 31, 294, 17, 209, 71, 75, 57, 24, 91, 149], k=2
Example Output: 17

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

Example Input: [139, 14, 275, 103, 213, 287, 173, 181, 127, 125, 91, 257, 267, 209, 54, 297, 128, 167, 138, 155], k=1
Example Output:
14