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: [31, 78, 202, 71, 131, 121, 106, 123, 133, 221, 282, 141, 150, 255, 273, 237, 86, 38, 117, 171], k=18
Example Output: 255

Example Input: [157, 17, 177, 115, 219, 106, 124, 167, 210, 193, 171, 148, 242, 183, 236, 55, 11, 127, 165, 212], k=11
Example Output: 167

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

