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: [101, 139, 185, 11, 275, 198, 126, 215, 38, 161, 13, 176, 242, 189, 92, 222, 79, 25, 109, 216], k=20
Example Output: 275

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: [217, 170, 223, 94, 230, 104, 218, 42, 118, 265, 82, 281, 149, 71, 273, 51, 196, 72, 138, 247], k=2
Example Output:
51

