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]: [288, 121, 80, 59, 294, 62, 131, 129, 122, 95, 275, 34, 202, 253, 86, 136, 236, 217, 174, 216], k=17
[A]: 253

[Q]: [48, 51, 19, 163, 242, 98, 100, 294, 28, 14, 126, 290, 57, 181, 78, 24, 174, 32, 213, 206], k=2
[A]: 19

[Q]: [178, 170, 196, 57, 265, 258, 84, 209, 259, 87, 130, 134, 49, 106, 18, 177, 207, 199, 131, 257], k=12
[A]:
178