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: [25, 193, 152, 125, 30, 226, 42, 157, 53, 201, 197, 252, 204, 63, 170, 148, 65, 23, 10, 137], k=11
Example Output: 148

Example Input: [259, 161, 27, 153, 19, 36, 233, 25, 292, 137, 56, 65, 193, 171, 282, 114, 10, 108, 43, 128], k=17
Example Output: 233

Example Input: [297, 154, 166, 65, 256, 282, 150, 241, 67, 255, 79, 232, 27, 192, 81, 298, 144, 155, 252, 111], k=11
Example Output:
166