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.

Example Input: [227, 108, 115, 232, 297, 144, 267, 88, 244, 91, 68, 114, 248, 180, 173, 219, 257, 66, 236, 197], k=17
Example Output: 248

Example Input: [41, 298, 78, 45, 265, 123, 287, 16, 198, 266, 38, 69, 18, 165, 271, 14, 82, 75, 252, 80], k=8
Example Output: 75

Example Input: [101, 60, 42, 104, 107, 109, 273, 288, 64, 23, 144, 18, 298, 247, 158, 53, 145, 46, 155, 80], k=5
Example Output:
53