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: [72, 285, 153, 18, 207, 96, 39, 37, 113, 237, 156, 56, 270, 134, 279, 32, 181, 211, 55, 17], k=12

A: 153
****
Q: [118, 135, 157, 125, 187, 92, 41, 91, 72, 69, 167, 38, 154, 85, 26, 213, 287, 271, 212, 138], k=3

A: 41
****
Q: [61, 280, 285, 77, 54, 21, 204, 118, 170, 89, 93, 80, 215, 296, 184, 38, 68, 144, 121, 207], k=6

A:
77
****