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: [41, 298, 78, 45, 265, 123, 287, 16, 198, 266, 38, 69, 18, 165, 271, 14, 82, 75, 252, 80], k=8

Output: 75

Input: Consider Input: [162, 147, 103, 261, 215, 61, 298, 268, 131, 45, 267, 58, 176, 155, 200, 17, 96, 57, 18, 109], k=20

Output: 298

Input: Consider Input: [149, 100, 190, 102, 298, 30, 150, 221, 209, 51, 44, 117, 72, 159, 181, 81, 125, 31, 188, 58], k=9
Output: 102