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: [41, 298, 78, 45, 265, 123, 287, 16, 198, 266, 38, 69, 18, 165, 271, 14, 82, 75, 252, 80], k=8

A: 75
****
Q: [175, 32, 35, 108, 142, 10, 81, 47, 171, 89, 149, 98, 110, 211, 14, 113, 15, 293, 102, 84], k=16

A: 149
****
Q: [158, 275, 17, 60, 47, 109, 91, 170, 99, 147, 83, 245, 216, 112, 176, 151, 279, 78, 260, 149], k=20

A:
279
****