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: [53, 280, 105, 133, 146, 112, 237, 125, 120, 263, 204, 149, 59, 117, 137, 130, 172, 206, 82, 94], k=3
Example Output: 82

Example Input: [262, 175, 116, 233, 122, 247, 267, 286, 13, 74, 28, 145, 126, 205, 165, 259, 238, 76, 81, 177], k=9
Example Output: 145

Example Input: [98, 104, 201, 129, 60, 241, 81, 101, 256, 13, 217, 268, 127, 108, 184, 11, 230, 24, 79, 130], k=19
Example Output:
256

