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: [90, 110, 222, 54, 223, 287, 43, 153, 17, 218, 87, 130, 244, 297, 159, 267, 272, 55, 248, 86], k=8

Output: 110

Input: Consider Input: [95, 246, 215, 50, 209, 25, 114, 252, 164, 171, 33, 233, 59, 35, 99, 87, 285, 36, 226, 225], k=16

Output: 226

Input: Consider Input: [70, 184, 82, 86, 192, 24, 208, 79, 295, 154, 94, 221, 161, 174, 21, 173, 72, 299, 250, 32], k=4
Output: 70