I think that this is a contributing factor, in my case I had never previously panicked underwater (or for that matter anywhere I remember). I watched other people experience it in my open water class in the pool and in one case at the open water checkout dives.
Perhaps the problem was as much not experiencing any significant problems on prior dives as it was the specific problem experienced on this dive.
This is an interesting point and thinking back, it's true that I my reluctance to relinquish my "non functional" reg certainly didn't help the situation.
I was thinking again shortly after I started the ascent, I remember thinking that I should be able to breath from the free flow and trying to do so on the ascent. Although controlled isn't a word I would have used to describe it, the latter portion of it wasn't a panicked swim.
FWIW I think that a student/teacher relationship was only present by implication. I've dove with UP pretty much weekly for the last couple of months, and I don't think he had any reason to believe I was about to panic when I did. And quite honestly there probably wasn't much he could have done to stop me surfacing once it happened.
I take full responsibility for the incident, UP was right there trying to help me, but as I said before he isn't a mind reader.
I've said before this wasn't a risky dive, the water was calm, minimal current, the "dive plan" was to stay shallow and practice with the equipment and that's what we did. In a pool we would have been shallower, and the situation may never have arissen but I'm not sure how much safer I would have been in the same situation.
What bit me was two fold, firstly it was an unfamiliarity with the configuration, going over the equipmemt on the surface (which we did extensively prior to the dive) I hadn't even considered what would happen wrapping the hose incorrectly, and I doubt UP considered it happening. This coupled with me unnecessarilly removing my backup reg prior to wrapping the primary into place when the incident occured.
In retrospect (and hindsight is 20/20 as they say) before running OOA drills we should have spent more time practicing just swapping to the backup. I needed to "learn" where it was, probably not something that is obvious to someone used to diving with the configuration. On the subsequent dive this is exactly what we did.
The second was a lack of familiarity with the specific equipment which prevented me from easilly purging the reg. This was pure stupidity on my part, I assumed that it was the same as my reg (hey all the rentals I've dove have been). I even purged it on the surface to check the air flow prior to the dive, I just didn't look at it closely.
I'm sure UP will chiome in here with his version of what happened and what he would do differently if anything. Although I think he's off diving in Canada for the next couple of days.
