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: [182, 287, 153, 29, 292, 220, 52, 104, 299, 236, 113, 10, 117, 125, 95, 44, 180, 42, 173, 215], k=2
Example Output: 29

Example Input: [115, 53, 104, 256, 242, 101, 82, 108, 88, 47, 212, 222, 298, 102, 35, 119, 269, 217, 42, 236], k=6
Example Output: 88

Example Input: [15, 122, 80, 104, 234, 167, 264, 168, 102, 94, 209, 73, 52, 134, 64, 178, 175, 57, 74, 109], k=6
Example Output:
74