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: [144, 283, 257, 94, 54, 261, 75, 182, 199, 111, 106, 103, 251, 252, 222, 109, 203, 280, 45, 81], k=2

Output: 54

Input: Consider Input: [94, 116, 256, 81, 106, 150, 29, 112, 198, 151, 85, 96, 138, 65, 219, 210, 266, 97, 134, 64], k=12

Output: 134

Input: Consider Input: [85, 214, 295, 30, 46, 220, 137, 193, 126, 68, 66, 110, 24, 209, 142, 125, 61, 273, 144, 246], k=16
Output: 214