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: [285, 217, 45, 68, 242, 281, 185, 60, 86, 170, 91, 131, 201, 263, 138, 140, 220, 299, 133, 35], k=11
Example Output: 170

Example Input: [85, 214, 295, 30, 46, 220, 137, 193, 126, 68, 66, 110, 24, 209, 142, 125, 61, 273, 144, 246], k=16
Example Output: 214

Example Input: [257, 27, 91, 252, 48, 104, 115, 61, 238, 245, 283, 187, 234, 96, 223, 159, 284, 174, 224, 26], k=5
Example Output:
91