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.

Q: [272, 96, 64, 119, 236, 228, 129, 252, 297, 201, 144, 29, 20, 200, 162, 79, 285, 254, 189, 196], k=16

A: 252
****
Q: [101, 60, 42, 104, 107, 109, 273, 288, 64, 23, 144, 18, 298, 247, 158, 53, 145, 46, 155, 80], k=5

A: 53
****
Q: [135, 180, 154, 219, 60, 127, 79, 152, 201, 65, 67, 122, 55, 68, 32, 287, 231, 38, 45, 280], k=20

A:
287
****
