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: [70, 168, 205, 161, 124, 282, 177, 231, 271, 219, 87, 221, 42, 217, 230, 121, 37, 134, 15, 68], k=3
Example Output: 42

Example Input: [204, 41, 236, 97, 178, 250, 180, 257, 124, 120, 126, 265, 185, 152, 281, 233, 268, 283, 286, 71], k=17
Example Output: 268

Example Input: [42, 12, 271, 254, 90, 213, 133, 29, 199, 245, 276, 207, 71, 68, 236, 201, 230, 160, 242, 294], k=13
Example Output:
230