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: [37, 237, 171, 87, 114, 258, 187, 65, 278, 82, 145, 247, 239, 250, 58, 289, 27, 294, 150, 163], k=5
Example Output: 82

Example Input: [47, 110, 226, 164, 95, 31, 36, 115, 79, 90, 64, 205, 124, 147, 250, 225, 35, 179, 235, 196], k=3
Example Output: 36

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