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, 93, 282, 251, 185, 285, 123, 216, 136, 165, 161, 75, 247, 246, 162, 141, 124, 13, 188, 191], k=13
Example Output: 188

Example Input: [209, 36, 151, 99, 21, 91, 38, 230, 289, 204, 33, 254, 278, 115, 137, 24, 76, 174, 118, 126], k=9
Example Output: 115

Example Input: [88, 150, 274, 260, 168, 95, 279, 108, 19, 296, 247, 107, 132, 210, 177, 284, 161, 223, 231, 185], k=6
Example Output:
132