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: [14, 162, 33, 137, 151, 210, 248, 269, 24, 252, 114, 164, 104, 147, 259, 190, 197, 180, 289, 37], k=5

Output: 104

Input: Consider Input: [113, 128, 35, 235, 243, 222, 247, 220, 150, 126, 105, 238, 293, 240, 81, 261, 191, 10, 148, 144], k=17

Output: 243

Input: Consider Input: [182, 287, 153, 29, 292, 220, 52, 104, 299, 236, 113, 10, 117, 125, 95, 44, 180, 42, 173, 215], k=2
Output: 29