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: [118, 135, 157, 125, 187, 92, 41, 91, 72, 69, 167, 38, 154, 85, 26, 213, 287, 271, 212, 138], k=3

A: 41
****
Q: [63, 25, 275, 134, 31, 36, 142, 91, 233, 10, 125, 151, 80, 167, 212, 287, 262, 94, 225, 227], k=11

A: 142
****
Q: [149, 100, 190, 102, 298, 30, 150, 221, 209, 51, 44, 117, 72, 159, 181, 81, 125, 31, 188, 58], k=9

A:
102
****
