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, 283, 257, 94, 54, 261, 75, 182, 199, 111, 106, 103, 251, 252, 222, 109, 203, 280, 45, 81], k=2

Output: 54

Input: Consider Input: [55, 246, 14, 54, 103, 101, 213, 70, 183, 200, 250, 97, 221, 282, 19, 252, 228, 59, 13, 204], k=13

Output: 204

Input: Consider Input: [33, 54, 96, 31, 26, 52, 86, 72, 203, 138, 258, 62, 262, 42, 222, 78, 45, 38, 80, 170], k=10
Output: 72