Being very cold all the time was a theme for me as well.
My school was in a mountainous region of a distant colony of the UK, and there was no heating at all beyond the electric 2-bar heater in the housemistress's quarters. During winter we'd absolutely freeze all night long. The mornings in particular were torturous - coldest part of the day, no reprieve, from damp cold bed to damp cold uniform, then marching off to the dining hall through freezing fog. Hot water sometimes switched off in the communal showers as punishment for a whole house. No baths allowed - water restrictions.
The winter uniform included knee socks and I remember all the girls had purple/blue knees from the cold, all season. We'd also live on super noodles and endless cups of tea as it was a way to keep warm.
And being hungry. Yesterday I had such a sad memory - of begging a day girl to let me come home with her on the afternoon of Shrove Tuesday, because I knew they'd have pancakes, and I was missing my mother dreadfully, and she'd always make pancakes on that day, and I was so hungry and cold that day. The day girl had already chosen another boarder friend to go with her and was lording it over me but eventually said I could come with them. They then ate their pancakes in front of me and pointedly refused to offer me any, just to teach me a lesson I guess, knowing I was too ashamed to beg even more. I walked back to school crying and feeling like human refuse.
I also stole sliced bread as it was easy to hide in pockets. Anything to feel full/warm.
This was in the 90s! It sounds Dickensian reading it back but it wasn't even that long ago.
If a word was mentioned of any unhappiness, if we acted out at all, we were hauled into the headmistress' office and bollocked for it, put on report, gated and then close-gated, until we shut up fell into line. Girls with eating disorders, who couldn't hold it together due to homesickness, any of that - same treatment. Absolutely no mercy. This included girls in the junior school. There was a girl who drew pictures of her sexual abuse and when a teacher found the papers in her desk, she suffered this fate as well - she was assumed to be filthy minded or loose and as such she needed to be punished.
There was a girl in my house who could not stop having tantrums - I think she may have been slightly on the spectrum, looking back - and who suffered horrendously with homesickness. I remember her inner arms beset with eczema and her poor face swollen from crying all the time. She would sometimes lock herself in one of the toilets during a tantrum and I think all she was trying to do was find one blessed moment of privacy in an attempt to calm herself down. Her parents were diplomats and left her there all year. She was a lovely girl. Her suffering was awful to watch.
But it was a vair vair good school, you know, only the very best, ever so prestigious, bracing rural air, the making of them, and so on.