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: [170, 146, 278, 212, 79, 175, 256, 230, 120, 282, 126, 97, 190, 33, 196, 174, 39, 188, 47, 243], k=4
Example Output: 79

Example Input: [118, 100, 81, 27, 285, 272, 289, 217, 162, 196, 277, 171, 84, 113, 183, 298, 80, 28, 139, 77], k=9
Example Output: 118

Example Input: [117, 89, 182, 76, 216, 86, 31, 283, 142, 237, 178, 35, 200, 232, 23, 296, 211, 273, 192, 10], k=12
Example Output:
192