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:
[14, 162, 33, 137, 151, 210, 248, 269, 24, 252, 114, 164, 104, 147, 259, 190, 197, 180, 289, 37], k=5

Ex Output:
104

Ex Input:
[278, 41, 208, 239, 246, 23, 268, 17, 96, 253, 248, 177, 244, 15, 280, 60, 59, 257, 199, 123], k=13

Ex Output:
244

Ex Input:
[81, 235, 25, 282, 104, 10, 130, 20, 56, 21, 232, 265, 274, 198, 131, 267, 97, 121, 167, 261], k=16

Ex Output:
261