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.

[EX Q]: [160, 171, 147, 167, 154, 223, 297, 69, 168, 152, 96, 224, 24, 263, 283, 31, 162, 87, 111, 12], k=20
[EX A]: 297

[EX Q]: [98, 237, 179, 245, 268, 231, 97, 238, 174, 137, 153, 63, 168, 289, 50, 62, 57, 159, 81, 255], k=18
[EX A]: 255

[EX Q]: [31, 78, 202, 71, 131, 121, 106, 123, 133, 221, 282, 141, 150, 255, 273, 237, 86, 38, 117, 171], k=18
[EX A]:
255