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

Example Input: [232, 161, 31, 102, 107, 237, 89, 110, 238, 190, 84, 291, 100, 251, 127, 262, 120, 76, 119, 261], k=2
Example Output: 76

Example Input: [158, 275, 17, 60, 47, 109, 91, 170, 99, 147, 83, 245, 216, 112, 176, 151, 279, 78, 260, 149], k=20
Example Output:
279

