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:
[117, 58, 36, 193, 159, 39, 171, 47, 192, 78, 156, 140, 211, 10, 23, 111, 260, 32, 209, 138], k=9

Ex Output:
111

Ex Input:
[42, 12, 271, 254, 90, 213, 133, 29, 199, 245, 276, 207, 71, 68, 236, 201, 230, 160, 242, 294], k=13

Ex Output:
230

Ex Input:
[241, 119, 166, 55, 225, 112, 67, 32, 47, 267, 129, 294, 69, 229, 174, 157, 286, 245, 101, 115], k=17

Ex Output:
245