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.

Example Input: [27, 70, 212, 164, 256, 204, 25, 51, 31, 139, 22, 102, 160, 106, 15, 74, 177, 126, 223, 290], k=9
Example Output: 102

Example Input: [68, 157, 264, 262, 59, 14, 61, 185, 287, 93, 20, 152, 172, 274, 32, 73, 31, 285, 222, 30], k=7
Example Output: 61

Example Input: [262, 92, 233, 54, 34, 46, 160, 145, 294, 26, 71, 70, 158, 169, 64, 299, 49, 12, 105, 37], k=15
Example Output:
160