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: [74, 20, 106, 219, 190, 33, 14, 36, 159, 27, 224, 283, 13, 129, 40, 230, 220, 43, 63, 205], k=7

Output: 40

Input: Consider Input: [262, 175, 116, 233, 122, 247, 267, 286, 13, 74, 28, 145, 126, 205, 165, 259, 238, 76, 81, 177], k=9

Output: 145

Input: Consider Input: [111, 48, 244, 114, 218, 69, 112, 253, 87, 27, 61, 141, 58, 30, 161, 54, 179, 227, 25, 202], k=17
Output: 218