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: [224, 250, 168, 104, 33, 115, 240, 283, 134, 79, 205, 178, 44, 28, 207, 147, 266, 232, 284, 196], k=19
Example Output: 283

Example Input: [232, 161, 31, 102, 107, 237, 89, 110, 238, 190, 84, 291, 100, 251, 127, 262, 120, 76, 119, 261], k=2
Example Output: 76

Example Input: [278, 41, 208, 239, 246, 23, 268, 17, 96, 253, 248, 177, 244, 15, 280, 60, 59, 257, 199, 123], k=13
Example Output:
244

