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 Input:
[147, 31, 154, 196, 96, 14, 288, 116, 217, 17, 141, 143, 68, 94, 212, 184, 223, 42, 214, 63], k=8

Ex Output:
96

Ex Input:
[124, 118, 236, 227, 74, 148, 136, 33, 121, 253, 282, 246, 229, 186, 181, 235, 146, 67, 298, 244], k=4

Ex Output:
118

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

Ex Output:
255