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: [27, 70, 212, 164, 256, 204, 25, 51, 31, 139, 22, 102, 160, 106, 15, 74, 177, 126, 223, 290], k=9
Example Output: 102

Example Input: [99, 188, 61, 114, 72, 137, 222, 220, 19, 109, 140, 224, 286, 253, 226, 64, 258, 131, 170, 67], k=2
Example Output: 61

Example Input: [101, 139, 185, 11, 275, 198, 126, 215, 38, 161, 13, 176, 242, 189, 92, 222, 79, 25, 109, 216], k=20
Example Output:
275