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: [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: [217, 170, 223, 94, 230, 104, 218, 42, 118, 265, 82, 281, 149, 71, 273, 51, 196, 72, 138, 247], k=2
Example Output: 51

Example Input: [253, 223, 232, 292, 217, 68, 55, 190, 122, 299, 176, 154, 280, 204, 50, 29, 179, 130, 10, 241], k=11
Example Output:
190