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: [34, 225, 16, 48, 288, 69, 123, 61, 55, 221, 109, 165, 73, 32, 100, 44, 257, 223, 36, 169], k=7
Example Output: 55

Example Input: [99, 239, 40, 23, 276, 132, 133, 119, 294, 271, 72, 49, 186, 282, 244, 236, 121, 167, 268, 170], k=18
Example Output: 276

Example Input: [254, 115, 173, 94, 228, 168, 130, 202, 129, 42, 142, 61, 15, 244, 185, 123, 144, 256, 49, 227], k=1
Example Output:
15