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: [144, 18, 223, 63, 151, 196, 244, 85, 107, 170, 239, 126, 292, 159, 122, 97, 129, 229, 207, 202], k=1

Output: 18


Input: Consider Input: [278, 41, 208, 239, 246, 23, 268, 17, 96, 253, 248, 177, 244, 15, 280, 60, 59, 257, 199, 123], k=13

Output: 244


Input: Consider Input: [118, 100, 81, 27, 285, 272, 289, 217, 162, 196, 277, 171, 84, 113, 183, 298, 80, 28, 139, 77], k=9


Output: 118