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: [281, 142, 133, 266, 79, 192, 140, 96, 48, 56, 268, 247, 22, 143, 195, 222, 36, 295, 93, 13], k=4
Example Output: 48

Example Input: [59, 163, 61, 189, 171, 274, 121, 266, 263, 29, 159, 35, 129, 279, 40, 287, 191, 54, 252, 224], k=12
Example Output: 189

Example Input: [119, 165, 69, 230, 139, 152, 268, 176, 68, 127, 111, 214, 232, 65, 157, 25, 266, 212, 258, 59], k=10
Example Output:
152