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: [113, 128, 35, 235, 243, 222, 247, 220, 150, 126, 105, 238, 293, 240, 81, 261, 191, 10, 148, 144], k=17

Output: 243

Input: Consider Input: [34, 225, 16, 48, 288, 69, 123, 61, 55, 221, 109, 165, 73, 32, 100, 44, 257, 223, 36, 169], k=7

Output: 55

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