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: [27, 70, 212, 164, 256, 204, 25, 51, 31, 139, 22, 102, 160, 106, 15, 74, 177, 126, 223, 290], k=9
Example Output: 102

Example Input: [194, 272, 269, 186, 259, 148, 150, 53, 222, 168, 197, 133, 31, 12, 29, 205, 67, 123, 81, 89], k=7
Example Output: 89

Example Input: [296, 139, 50, 190, 196, 299, 77, 247, 204, 145, 227, 90, 246, 259, 23, 193, 233, 75, 276, 10], k=20
Example Output:
299

