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: [288, 121, 80, 59, 294, 62, 131, 129, 122, 95, 275, 34, 202, 253, 86, 136, 236, 217, 174, 216], k=17
Example Output: 253

Example Input: [261, 53, 110, 80, 257, 117, 112, 45, 21, 74, 68, 72, 63, 152, 141, 246, 47, 262, 189, 103], k=6
Example Output: 68

Example Input: [70, 294, 268, 166, 52, 108, 277, 232, 141, 230, 146, 149, 195, 107, 104, 263, 40, 244, 116, 275], k=11
Example Output:
166