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: [90, 110, 222, 54, 223, 287, 43, 153, 17, 218, 87, 130, 244, 297, 159, 267, 272, 55, 248, 86], k=8
Example Output: 110

Example Input: [291, 47, 288, 27, 145, 228, 94, 219, 240, 148, 76, 48, 68, 10, 44, 229, 38, 239, 188, 59], k=13
Example Output: 188

Example Input: [203, 154, 288, 91, 157, 287, 252, 289, 205, 282, 100, 93, 72, 246, 253, 235, 180, 135, 74, 68], k=14
Example Output:
246