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.

[Q]: [45, 120, 23, 285, 143, 53, 174, 299, 247, 250, 34, 12, 202, 117, 245, 25, 89, 203, 275, 239], k=12
[A]: 202

[Q]: [292, 116, 83, 47, 68, 195, 133, 182, 231, 154, 128, 184, 263, 284, 22, 66, 127, 72, 228, 98], k=17
[A]: 231

[Q]: [162, 147, 103, 261, 215, 61, 298, 268, 131, 45, 267, 58, 176, 155, 200, 17, 96, 57, 18, 109], k=20
[A]:
298