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: [90, 107, 78, 117, 51, 37, 210, 186, 155, 81, 245, 214, 203, 190, 67, 149, 99, 116, 21, 89], k=18
Example Output: 210

Example Input: [124, 215, 224, 251, 261, 118, 255, 52, 77, 67, 36, 20, 167, 46, 97, 269, 198, 136, 291, 135], k=20
Example Output: 291

Example Input: [124, 118, 236, 227, 74, 148, 136, 33, 121, 253, 282, 246, 229, 186, 181, 235, 146, 67, 298, 244], k=4
Example Output:
118

