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.

[118, 135, 157, 125, 187, 92, 41, 91, 72, 69, 167, 38, 154, 85, 26, 213, 287, 271, 212, 138], k=3
41