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: [234, 140, 29, 61, 116, 256, 183, 137, 255, 265, 245, 122, 200, 63, 50, 155, 28, 154, 39, 271], k=17
Example Output: 255

Example Input: [95, 246, 215, 50, 209, 25, 114, 252, 164, 171, 33, 233, 59, 35, 99, 87, 285, 36, 226, 225], k=16
Example Output: 226

Example Input: [126, 265, 104, 289, 284, 219, 273, 203, 48, 173, 46, 70, 110, 42, 148, 209, 131, 11, 71, 105], k=10
Example Output:
126

