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: [203, 154, 288, 91, 157, 287, 252, 289, 205, 282, 100, 93, 72, 246, 253, 235, 180, 135, 74, 68], k=14
Example Output: 246

Example Input: [69, 182, 35, 280, 130, 107, 92, 206, 24, 279, 188, 212, 278, 25, 127, 113, 105, 50, 169, 192], k=20
Example Output: 280

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

