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: [31, 78, 202, 71, 131, 121, 106, 123, 133, 221, 282, 141, 150, 255, 273, 237, 86, 38, 117, 171], k=18

Output: 255


Input: Consider Input: [95, 246, 215, 50, 209, 25, 114, 252, 164, 171, 33, 233, 59, 35, 99, 87, 285, 36, 226, 225], k=16

Output: 226


Input: Consider Input: [162, 147, 103, 261, 215, 61, 298, 268, 131, 45, 267, 58, 176, 155, 200, 17, 96, 57, 18, 109], k=20


Output: 298